The research is meant to demonstrate Gavagai's Word Space Technology, which utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning to independently decipher and learn languages. So far, with over 20 years of development, Gavagai's software has learned 40 human languages, modeling languages on meaning instead of their structure. The company will challenge its technology by applying it to dolphin communication. It is suspected that dolphins communicate using complex patterns of clicking and whistles, and it's even been posited that dolphins have what appear to be conversations. However, the meaning behind this communication is--so far--not known, and research so far has been based on structure and repeated patterns in communication.

Swedish startup Gavagai AB, a language technology company that originated at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, has mastered 40 human languages with its language analysis software. Now, researchers from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology are teaming up with Gavagai AB to take on the language of dolphins, in a project undoubtedly focused as much on testing and expanding the system's capabilities as deciphering the thoughts of dolphins. The team will monitor bottlenose dolphins in a wildlife park and use Gavagai's artificial intelligence (AI) language analysis technology to decode the sounds and, if all goes according to plan, compile a dictionary of dolphin language. The team is confident that they'll be able to do this, thanks not only to the AI capabilities of the Gavagai AB system, but also to the availability of more dolphin data, larger computational resources, and newer recording methods. "We hope to be able to understand dolphins with the help of artificial intelligence technology," KTH adjunct professor and Gavagai co-founder Jussi Karlgren said in an interview with Bloomberg.

After mastering 40 human languages, a Swedish startup has turned to dolphins, hoping to use its language-analysis software to unlock the secrets of communication employed by the aquatic mammals. Using technology from artificial intelligence language-analysis company Gavagai AB, researchers from Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology will begin compiling a dolphin-language dictionary. The software will monitor captive bottlenose dolphins at a wildlife park about 90 miles south of Stockholm, the company said in an emailed statement Wednesday. "We hope to be able to understand dolphins with the help of artificial intelligence technology," Jussi Karlgren, an adjunct professor of language technology at KTH and co-founder of Gavagai, said in the statement. "We know that dolphins have a complex communication system, but we don't know what they are talking about yet."