A price of $ 100,000 for communication with animals was collected by researchers who have highlighted the sense of the whistles of the dolphins.
The Coller-Stobittle Prize for communication between bidirectional species was launched last year by the Jeremy Colaer Foundation and the University Tel Aviv.
The winning team, the Sarasota Dolphin research program led by Laela Sayigh and Peter Tyack of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has studied dolphins in the nose of the waters near Sarasota, Florida, for more than four decades.
Researchers have used non -invasive technologies such as hydrophones and digital acoustic labels attached by suction cups to record animal sounds. These include whistles of “signature” similar to a name, as well as “signature” whistles – sounds which represent around 50% of the calls of animals but which are misunderstood.
In their latest work, which has not yet been evaluated by peers, the team has identified at least 20 different types of signing whistles which are produced by several dolphins, finding that two types were each shared by at least 25 individuals.
When the researchers played these two sounds on the dolphins, they found an avoidance triggered in animals, which suggests that it could be an alarm signal, while the other triggered a range of responses, suggesting that this could be a sound emitted by dolphins when they meet something unexpected.
Sayigh said that victory was a surprise, adding: “I really didn’t expect it, so I’m more delighted. It is such an honor.”
The jury was led by Yossi Yovel, a zoology professor at the University of Tel Aviv, whose own team previously used machine learning algorithms to take off the meaning of the grinks manufactured by bats as they support it.
“We were mainly impressed by the huge set of long -term data that has been created, and we are sure that this will lead to many other new and interesting results,” said Yovel, adding that the judges were also impressed by the use by the team of non -invasive technologies to record animal calls and the use of drones and speakers to demonstrate the responses of dolphins on the ground.
Yovel added that the judges hoped that the price would help the application of AI to data to reveal even more impressive results.
Jonathan Birch, April detector of philosophy at the London School of Economics and one of the judges, said that the essential preventing humans from cracking the code of animal communication was the lack of data.
“Think of the billions of words necessary to form a large language model like Chatgpt. We are not like it for other animals,” he said.
“This is why we need programs like the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, which has built an extraordinary library of dolphin whistles over 40 years. The cumulative result of all this work is that Laela Sayigh and her team can now use learning in depth to analyze the whistles and perhaps, one day, make code. ”
Yovel said that around 20 teams had participated in this year’s competition, which led to four finalists. In addition to the Sayigh and Tyack team, the teams included understanding of communication in Nightingales, cuttlefish and Ouistits. He added that the 202-26 prize was now open to applications.
In addition to an annual price of $ 100,000, there is also a Grand Prix to be won, totaling $ 10 million in investment or $ 500,000 in cash. To win this, researchers must develop an algorithm to allow an animal to “communicate independently without recognizing that it is communicating with humans” – something that Jeremy Paste suggested could be achieved over the next five years.
The challenge is inspired by the Turing test for AI, by which humans should not be able to say if they converse with a computer or a real person so that the system is deemed successful.
Robert Seyfarth, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the prize, praised the victory. “These are exceptional scientists, who do work that has revolutionized our understanding of communication and cognition of dolphins. It is a well-deserved recognition,” he said.
Clara Mancini, professor of animal-computer interaction at open university, said that the work of dolphins showed the potential of technology to advance our understanding of animal communication, perhaps one day one day, which allows people to communicate with them in their own terms.
“I think that one of the main advantages of these advances is that they could finally demonstrate that animal communication systems can be just as sophisticated and effective for use in the environments in which their users have evolved, because human language is for our species,” she said.
“However, in the journey to interspecific communication, I would say, we must remain aware that deciphering it from a language is not the same as the understanding of the experience of the users of the language and that, as well as curiosity, the challenge requires humility and respect for unique knowledge and the vision of the world that each species has.”
