Sperm whales communicate in short sequences of clicks known as codas. We present WhAM (Whale Acoustics Model), the first transformer-based model capable of generating synthetic sperm whale codas from any audio prompt. WhAM is built by finetuning VampNet, a masked acoustic token model pretrained on musical audio, using 10k coda recordings collected over the past two decades. Through iterative masked token prediction, WhAM generates high-fidelity synthetic codas that preserve key acoustic features of the source recordings. We evaluate WhAM's synthetic codas using Fréchet Audio Distance and through perceptual studies with expert marine biologists. On downstream classification tasks including rhythm, social unit, and vowel classification, WhAM's learned representations achieve strong performance, despite being trained for generation rather than classification. Our code is available at https://github.com/Project-CETI/wham

This paper proposes a methodology for discovering meaningful properties in data by exploring the latent space of unsupervised deep generative models. We combine manipulation of individual latent variables to extreme values outside the training range with methods inspired by causal inference into an approach we call causal disentanglement with extreme values (CDEV) and show that this approach yields insights for model interpretability. Using this technique, we can infer what properties of unknown data the model encodes as meaningful. We apply the methodology to test what is meaningful in the communication system of sperm whales, one of the most intriguing and understudied animal communication systems. We train a network that has been shown to learn meaningful representations of speech and test whether we can leverage such unsupervised learning to decipher the properties of another vocal communication system for which we have no ground truth. The proposed technique suggests that sperm whales encode information using the number of clicks in a sequence, the regularity of their timing, and audio properties such as the spectral mean and the acoustic regularity of the sequences. Some of these findings are consistent with existing hypotheses, while others are proposed for the first time. We also argue that our models uncover rules that govern the structure of communication units in the sperm whale communication system and apply them while generating innovative data not shown during training. This paper suggests that an interpretation of the outputs of deep neural networks with causal methodology can be a viable strategy for approaching data about which little is known and presents another case of how deep learning can limit the hypothesis space. Finally, the proposed approach combining latent space manipulation and causal inference can be extended to other architectures and arbitrary datasets.

GPT-3 is the latest attempt by OpenAI, a tech research lab in San Francisco, to unlock artificial intelligence with an anvil rather than a hairpin. As brute force strategies go, the results are impressive. The language-generating model performs well across a striking range of contexts. Given only simple prompts, GPT-3 writes not just interesting short stories and clever songs, but also executable code such as web graphics. GPT-3's ability to dazzle with prose and poetry that appears entirely natural, even erudite or lyrical, is less surprising. It's a parlor trick that its predecessor performed a year earlier, though its then-massive 1.5 billion parameters are swamped by GPT-3's power, which uses 175 billion parameters to enhance its stylistic abstractions and semantic associations. Just like their great-grandmother, Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA, a natural language processing program developed in the 1960s, these systems benefit considerably from human reliance on familiar heuristics for speakers' cognitive abilities.

Last year, the cover of New Scientist ran the headline, "Is the Universe Conscious?" Mathematician and physicist Johannes Kleiner, at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy in Germany, told author Michael Brooks that a mathematically precise definition of consciousness could mean that the cosmos is suffused with subjective experience. "This could be the beginning of a scientific revolution," Kleiner said, referring to research he and others have been conducting. Kleiner and his colleagues are focused on the Integrated Information Theory of consciousness, one of the more prominent theories of consciousness today. As Kleiner notes, IIT (as the theory is known) is thoroughly panpsychist because all integrated information has at least one bit of consciousness.

The past decade has witnessed a groundbreaking rise of machine learning for human language analysis, with current methods capable of automatically accurately recovering various aspects of syntax and semantics - including sentence structure and grounded word meaning - from large data collections. Recent research showed the promise of such tools for analyzing acoustic communication in nonhuman species. We posit that machine learning will be the cornerstone of future collection, processing, and analysis of multimodal streams of data in animal communication studies, including bioacoustic, behavioral, biological, and environmental data. Cetaceans are unique non-human model species as they possess sophisticated acoustic communications, but utilize a very different encoding system that evolved in an aquatic rather than terrestrial medium. Sperm whales, in particular, with their highly-developed neuroanatomical features, cognitive abilities, social structures, and discrete click-based encoding make for an excellent starting point for advanced machine learning tools that can be applied to other animals in the future. This paper details a roadmap toward this goal based on currently existing technology and multidisciplinary scientific community effort. We outline the key elements required for the collection and processing of massive bioacoustic data of sperm whales, detecting their basic communication units and language-like higher-level structures, and validating these models through interactive playback experiments. The technological capabilities developed by such an undertaking are likely to yield cross-applications and advancements in broader communities investigating non-human communication and animal behavioral research.

From writer-director Neil Burger ("Divergent") comes another young adult science-fiction tale, this one of a cruise ship in deep space full of restless teenagers under the supervision of a single adult. Some of the young people find out that the adult is keeping them drugged and docile and forcing them to reproduce artificially. Is that a recipe for YA trouble or what? Just when you thought you could not watch one more film of this kind, here is "Voyagers," a title that sounds enough like "Passengers" (2016) to put you off you spaceship-grown peas and carrots. The story is set in 2063 when Earth is ravaged, and scientists have searched for another planet to colonize.

This week we are reprinting our top stories of 2020. This article first appeared online in our Facts So Romantic blog in May, 2020. In May, the cover of New Scientist ran the headline, "Is the Universe Conscious?" Mathematician and physicist Johannes Kleiner, at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy in Germany, told author Michael Brooks that a mathematically precise definition of consciousness could mean that the cosmos is suffused with subjective experience. "This could be the beginning of a scientific revolution," Kleiner said, referring to research he and others have been conducting.

This month, the cover of New Scientist ran the headline, "Is the Universe Conscious?" Mathematician and physicist Johannes Kleiner, at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy in Germany, told author Michael Brooks that a mathematically precise definition of consciousness could mean that the cosmos is suffused with subjective experience. "This could be the beginning of a scientific revolution," Kleiner said, referring to research he and others have been conducting. Kleiner and his colleagues are focused on the Integrated Information Theory of consciousness, one of the more prominent theories of consciousness today. As Kleiner notes, IIT (as the theory is known) is thoroughly panpsychist because all integrated information has at least one bit of consciousness.

Thanks to the internet, we no longer need to go to the shops; instead, the shops come to us. In a few clicks you can order everything from the latest digital gadgets to dog food, from the comfort of your sofa. And same-day delivery options mean you can receive items faster than ever. But the speedy online transactions and one-click purchasing systems that underpin the ecommerce sector don't just make life easier for consumers; they make things easier for fraudsters too. Successful ecommerce retailers receive thousands of orders a day, and these card-not-present (CNP) purchases are harder to verify than those where the card and cardholder are physically present.

If you are interested in writing a review, contact chandra@cis. It is intended to be a "general textbook of knowledge-base analysis and design" (p. Its great strength is recognizing the need for an interdisciplinary approach, and the attempt at presenting the logical and philosophical foundations of knowledge representation under a unified view. Its great weakness is a lack of consistent rigor, which is needed in a textbook for newcomers to a subject. After some historical remarks and a first introductory chapter devoted to logic, Sowa immediately attacks the hard problems involved in choosing ontological categories, which lie at the heart of any knowledge representation project.