USING AI TO DECODE WHALE COMMUNICATIONS: A Conversation with Roger Payne and Daniela Rus
INTRODUCTION WITH JANET THOMAS
FOCUS ON: ROGER PAYNE
FOCUS ON: DANIELA RUS
GENERAL DISCUSSION
—-
This week we lost one of our great friends and one of the greatest voices in celebrating whales and ocean health: Roger Payne. Roger was a source of scientific wonder and personal wisdom for many generations of conservationists and whale scientists in the past, and no doubt in the future. Beginning with his discovery that humpback whales sang songs, and his brilliant idea to share these with the world, through a lifetime of helping us comprehend the critical importance of the health of the ocean in understanding planetary health, Roger was the best.
For our members who have been to past FiRe conferences, Roger was an almost annual intellectual treat, whose brilliance on stage, and wry humor in conversation, will never be forgotten.
In his honor, we are sharing a transcript of a previously unpublished SNS virtual FiReSide conversation we had in 2021 with Roger and Daniela Rus, head of MIT’s Toyota-CSAIL Joint Research Center, about a top-secret project just getting under way and about the science of using AI to understand whale communications.
For those who can join us at FiRe 2023 this fall, we will also be celebrating Roger through his son John’s work, onstage and in conversations, as the mandala continues to turn. I hope you all enjoy Roger, here and now, one more time. – mra
