Gasper Begus
@begus.bsky.social
Assoc. Professor at UC Berkeley Artificial and biological intelligence and language Linguistics Lead at Project CETI 🐳 PI Berkeley Biological and Artificial Language Lab 🗣️ College Principal of Bowles Hall 🏰 https://www.gasperbegus.com
Since Aristotle, literary theory has studied texts and reception. We propose a new object of literary study: the latent spaces of an AI model trained on a single text. We call the method latent reading and apply it to the first case study: FinneganLM, trained on Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.
Since Aristotle, literary theory has studied texts and reception. We propose a new object of literary study: the latent spaces of an AI model trained on a single text. We call the method latent reading and apply it to the first case study: FinneganLM, trained on Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.
It turns out whales don’t just get louder when commercial ships pass by - they change how they talk 🐋 In my latest newsletter, I'm highlighting reporting by Emma Bryce on how sperm whales in Dominica alter their “codas” to deal with human noise🧵👇 taltysoceandispatch.substack.com/p/whales-tel...
Whales Tell Each Other When Ships Are Nearby, Scientists Say
Plus: a new axolotl fossil is discovered and why a super El Niño could be a disaster for West Coast fisheries.
taltysoceandispatch.substack.com
Plus, get a sneak peek at the marine carbon dioxide removal database Allison Gacad and I are launching this fall! Read the full dispatch (and listen to an actual recording of the whale codas) here: taltysoceandispatch.substack.com/p/whales-tel... Stay salty! 🌊
Whales Tell Each Other When Ships Are Nearby, Scientists Say
Plus: a new axolotl fossil is discovered and why a super El Niño could be a disaster for West Coast fisheries.
taltysoceandispatch.substack.com
New technology can help us listen to the ocean. Yesterday we deployed an automatic glider that will record our whales for up to 30 days. Humbling to experience the vastness of whales’ lives.
New technology can help us listen to the ocean. Yesterday we deployed an automatic glider that will record our whales for up to 30 days. Humbling to experience the vastness of whales’ lives.
Very excited to give a keynote talk at the 12th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2) later today. I'll be talking about a new reframing of language and how some long held beliefs are being challenged by AI and new advances in understanding animals.
Aristotle wrote that dolphins have voice (which requires imagination and soul), but not complex sounds. I'll be arguing that cetaceans have much more complex sounds than what we used to believe.
Linguistics is a powerful science that has the capacity to change the course of history (like it did when Darwin borrowed from linguistics to argue for his evolutionary theory).
It can do so again by making us rethink the position of human and language in the natural world.
Very excited to give a keynote talk at the 12th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2) later today. I'll be talking about a new reframing of language and how some long held beliefs are being challenged by AI and new advances in understanding animals.
The one thing LLMs couldn’t do so far was write hymns in the correct Sanskrit meter. Until now.
Big tech companies are poaching the best professors, educating postdocs and now founding humanities journals. Copying is flattery, but academia has a lot of thinking to do.
Children speak fluently long before learning what a “noun” is. Using this analogy, linguistics professor Gašper Beguš highlights the gap between using language and reasoning about it—arguing that AI doesn’t need consciousness to make genuinely creative leaps. #Conlang #Linguistics #AI
Science Magazine@science.org · 3w agoAn #AI system that can construct new languages is fueling debate over the role of human creativity in language construction. https://scim.ag/4ffYfdE
Sperm whales change ‘vowel’ sounds when boats are nearby, scientists discover www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Sperm whales change ‘vowel’ sounds when boats are nearby, scientists discover
Researchers listening off the Caribbean island of Dominica found variations in the mammals’ audible clicks when marine traffic was close
theguardian.com
BlueEconomyNews.Earth Week in Review Blue Finance Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Receives $25 Million Investment for Longterm Global Coral Reef Research Program European Shipowners Say Commission’s New ETS Proposal a Start, But it Falls Short Shipping Scientists Find Sperm Whales Must Change…
BlueEconomyNews.Earth Week in Review
Blue Finance Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Receives $25 Million Investment for Longterm Global Coral Reef Research Program European Shipowners Say Commission’s New ETS Proposal a Start, But it Falls Short Shipping Scientists Find Sperm Whales Must Change Their Language to Cope With Intense Ocean Noise Pollution from Ships Samskip Is Bringing its Hydrogen-Powered SeaShuttle Project into the European HyShip Initiative…
blueeconomynews.earth
Our amazing @vcsi.bsky.social crew has been working hard to welcome you to Vermont! Our team designed a hand-drawn program zine (drawn by VCSI executive director @alexawoodward.bsky.social) and we folded 600 of them with love. See you soon!
Whales use vowels differently when ships are around. First glimpse at vowels being meaningful in whales too.
My headcanon is that they start doing funny accents to be silly because that's what they think humans sound like
Gasper Begus@begus.bsky.social · last wk.Whales use vowels differently when ships are around. First glimpse at vowels being meaningful in whales too.
"Sperm whales produce a specific pattern of clicking noises when they hear the noise of boats, researchers have found. The pattern is so distinct that the scientists who identified it said they can now use it to predict when ships are nearby."
Sperm whales change ‘vowel’ sounds when boats are nearby, scientists discover
Researchers listening off the Caribbean island of Dominica found variations in the mammals’ audible clicks when marine traffic was close
theguardian.com
Sperm whales change ‘vowel’ sounds when boats are nearby, scientists discover
Sperm whales change ‘vowel’ sounds when boats are nearby, scientists discover
Researchers listening off the Caribbean island of Dominica found variations in the mammals’ audible clicks when marine traffic was close
theguardian.com
Whales use vowels differently when ships are around. First glimpse at vowels being meaningful in whales too.
‘“This research begs the question: are whales talking about the ships, or is it an impact on their voices because the ships are around?”’
Sperm whales change ‘vowel’ sounds when boats are nearby, scientists discover
Researchers listening off the Caribbean island of Dominica found variations in the mammals’ audible clicks when marine traffic was close
theguardian.com
When ships are nearby, sperm whales change their calls - National Geographic apple.news/AELF6ugb1R5m...
When ships are nearby, sperm whales change their calls — National Geographic
In the presence of noise from ships, sperm whales change how they communicate, scientists find.
apple.news
