Mumbai: Padma Bhushan awardee Shekhar Kapur, who earlier came out in support of Artificial Intelligence in the content business, has shared an interesting story about the AI deciphering the signals from dolphins.
The filmmaker recently took to his Instagram, and shared a picture of a dolphin. He also penned a long note in the caption, as he spoke about the AI project.
He wrote, “The scientists were studying the intelligence of a dolphin in a tank. Sending signals and stimuli to the dolphin, as computers through the latest AI technology would record and analyse the dolphin’s response. They continued the study over several months looking for patterns. ‘How intelligent are the dolphins really ?’, they asked. What unnerved the scientists was the way the Dolphin would always come back and stare at the scientists as if to say ‘Hey, what’s your next signal?’. As if this was a game the dolphin was enjoying ‘Was the dolphin just enjoying the play?’ Does play have a pattern?”.
The filmmaker was talking about the recent DolphinGemma project by Google in which AI documents and studies communication patterns by dolphins.
However, what he wrote next seems to be fictitious. He shared, “When they analysed the Data, they could not find a cohesive response, no cohesive pattern from the dolphin even through the latest AI engine they found the responses completely random. Random?”. One day the 10 year old daughter of one of the scientists came to visit. As soon as the dolphin saw her, she got visibly excited, and started to roll up and down .. as if she wanted to play with the little girl. The voice of the dolphin started to almost sing and hum, the little girl hummed back, the scientists were astounded”.
He further mentioned, “They asked the little girl what was going on? ‘We’re singing together’, she said. The AI engine quickly analysed. It found that all the while the scientists were trying to study the dolphin, the dolphin was actually analysing and studying them back. Which is why they couldn’t find a pattern to the dolphin’s responses”.
“They should have been looking for their own patterns. ‘What is the song you’re singing with the dolphin asked the scientists. ‘It’s the song of the Planet Earth’, said the little girl. The dolphin stared at the scientists, the scientists asked what the dolphin wanted, why is the dolphin studying us? ‘She wants to understand what kind of species would want to destroy its own home. Its own planet’, replied the little girl. ‘How intelligent are humans really?’ The dolphin was asking”, he added.
(IANS)
