PROJECT CETI INC

NEW YORK CITY, New York, 10003-2896 United States

Mission Statement

Deep in the waters of the Eastern Caribbean lives a creature so large, so sophisticated, so mysterious, that it has fascinated humans for millennia. Over the course of history, we have told its story in our great books, listened to its songs with awe, and marveled as we learned of the complexity of its sounds. Now with advances in engineering, artificial intelligence, and linguistics, we will embark on a journey to make real the dream of every child — to understand and talk to these mystifying animals. Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) is deciphering the communication of the world’s most enigmatic ocean species: the sperm whale. In doing so, we are showing that today’s most cutting-edge technologies can be used to benefit not only humankind, but other species on this planet. By deeply enabling humans to better understand and protect the life around us, we thereby redefine our very understanding of the word “we.” Sperm whales have the largest brains to have ever existed; their vocalizations are among the loudest animal sounds on the planet. They communicate with one another via Morse Code-like sounds that vary from one sperm whale community to another and share hallmarks of a highly evolved language. They have been vocally communicating for millions of years, but only in the last fifteen have we begun to learn how some of their vocalizations are used for communication. Project CETI seeks to find a way to listen deeply to another species’ communication, interpret its voices, and then communicate back. This dream has only recently become possible, bringing together and building on the latest discoveries of experts in disparate fields who have never before seen one another as collaborators. Our team combines the world’s leading roboticists, marine biologists, machine learning experts, data scientists, linguists, and internet pioneers, working together to achieve a set of credible breakthroughs that — when they come together — will deliver a major impact. Project CETI is: • Developing the most non-invasive and non-destructive “delicate” robotics technologies to listen to sperm whales in the ocean and put the sounds in context • Deploying this technology to study a population of whales off the coast of Dominica, where we already have substantial data on their sounds, social lives, and behaviors • Pipelining the recorded data into a community of scientists who will decode it using cutting-edge machine learning, natural language processing, data science and linguistics

About This Cause

Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), a nonprofit organization and 2020 TED Audacious Project, is applying advanced machine learning and non-invasive robotics to listen to and translate the communication of whales. Founded and led by scientists, this transdisciplinary initiative is bringing together leading cryptographers, roboticists, linguists, AI experts, technologists and marine biologists. CETI is listening deeply to sperm whale communication and interpreting their voices.

PROJECT CETI INC
302 E 19Th St Suite 2C
NEW YORK CITY, New York 10003-2896
United States
Phone 202-681-9195
Twitter @projectceti
Unique Identifier 844630660