In today’s episode I’m speaking with Tom Mustill, a nature filmmaker and the author of ‘How to Speak Whale’. We recorded this a few weeks ago but since then I actually had the chance to travel to COP28, the climate conference, and see Tom and his friend Vahakn perform a whale song bath on the beach, which was absolutely magical. He was in Dubai to help give whales a voice with Whale and Dolphin Conservation, an organisation he’s an ambassador for. Tom is really great at telling the story of why whales matter and how crucial it is for us not only to try to protect them but also to allocate more resources and focus towards the technologies that could allow us to understand them and maybe even one day, communicate with them.

So we spoke about the anthropocentric approach we’ve taken to define language, and how both museums and zoos (the places most of us can easily go to to observe other species) are failing to capture behaviour and communication. We also discussed the philosophical idea of alignment within Ai (in other words, how do we teach new forms of computer intelligence to have value systems and a moral compass so they can operate within a framework that values human life and how the rest of the living world fits in.

Want to dive deeper?

Buy ‘How to speak whale’ - https://www.wob.com/en-gb/books/tom-mustill/how-to-speak-whale/9780008363420

Come say hi!

Tom on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tommustill
Why We Care on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/whywecarepodcast/
Tiphaine on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tiphainemarie_/

If you enjoyed the episode and want to help the podcast, I would be super grateful if you could leave a little review or share it with a friend who might like it. Thank you so much for caring and sending you lots of love!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Using AI to understand and communicate with whales with Tom Mustill, Nature filmmaker and author