Re:UC Berkeley scientists hail breakthrough in decoding whal...
by ggm on Monday November 17, 2025 @10:21PM
(#45961037)
The critique reminds me of how I and others complain about AI proponents: using a word like "vowel" to discuss a specific pattern detected in whale recordings is intentional or unintentional rei-ification which tends to the argument "it's speech" when really all you can say at this point is, there is a statistically valid pattern which can be discriminated. It's function, association with other concepts and "vowel-dom" is imputed, not proved.
Just like AI "hallucinations" and what this says about belief in AGI.
> The comparison to vowels is “completely nonsense,” says Luke Rendell, a marine biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland who has studied sperm whales for more than 30 years. “There’s no evidence that the animals are responding in any way to this [new pattern].”
> He notes that each sperm whale click isn’t just one tone but several in a row, and this can introduce ripples into a recording that aren’t present in the original. These ripples can look a lot like the pattern the CETI team found. He thinks the researchers didn’t do enough to rule out the possibility of recording artifacts.
Just like AI "hallucinations" and what this says about belief in AGI.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ai-new-sperm-whale-commu...
Also some critiques from three other scientists
> The comparison to vowels is “completely nonsense,” says Luke Rendell, a marine biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland who has studied sperm whales for more than 30 years. “There’s no evidence that the animals are responding in any way to this [new pattern].”
> He notes that each sperm whale click isn’t just one tone but several in a row, and this can introduce ripples into a recording that aren’t present in the original. These ripples can look a lot like the pattern the CETI team found. He thinks the researchers didn’t do enough to rule out the possibility of recording artifacts.
"silly humans!"
In Mars Attacks it didn't go well.