[HN Gopher] Ping, You've Got Whale: AI detection system alerts s...
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Ping, You've Got Whale: AI detection system alerts ships of whales
in their path
Author : Geekette
Score : 81 points
Date : 2025-04-22 18:28 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.biographic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.biographic.com)
| oatsandsugar wrote:
| Incredible title.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Related:
|
| _NOAA: Track Whale Detections With This Interactive Map_ -
| https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/track-whale-det...
|
| _NOAA: Passive Acoustic Cetacean Map_ - https://apps-
| nefsc.fisheries.noaa.gov/pacm/#/
|
| _WhaleMap_ - https://whalemap.org/WhaleMap/
| jMyles wrote:
| I'm kinda surprised the article doesn't mention (and I have no
| idea the feasibility of) a system that works in the opposite
| direction as well: somehow communicating via sound waves the
| speed, heading, and distance (maybe possible through some kind of
| doppler effect?) of a boat in such a way that whales will
| perceive and make themselves safe from collision.
|
| Seems at least worth researching.
|
| > Zitterbart's aim is for ship captains to receive zero false
| alerts, so that every ping truly requires their attention.
| Removing human oversight risks flooding ship captains with false
| reports
|
| This sounds great, as long as we're still on track for the whole
| "A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer
| must never make a management decision."
|
| I don't want to be the one to explain to the whales, "No, look,
| it's not our fault that we killed your singing partner - the AI
| told us this was the correct route. See?"
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Would large whales even have the concept of "I need to get out
| of the way of this bigger thing"?
| ge96 wrote:
| Submarine could have used it against the mountain
| jMyles wrote:
| If they're 60 years old and have lost three friends to boat
| collisions... probably?
| cwmoore wrote:
| Worth sending out enough information to determine.
| rambambram wrote:
| 2018: crypto system alerts ships of whales.
|
| 2012: cloud system alerts ships of whales.
|
| 2006: social media alerts ships of whales.
|
| 1998: internet alerts ships of whales.
|
| 1978: computer alerts ships of whales.
|
| 1938: sonar alerts ships of whales.
| serjester wrote:
| I think this such an awesome innovation but does anyone
| understand what incentivizes a ship's captain to take the
| warnings seriously? Is this just reliant on people being good
| people? I haven't worked with sailors but I did a lot of blue
| collar work when I was younger and there's a pessimistic side to
| me that struggles to see many of those guys caring. I do hope I'm
| wrong.
| rukuu001 wrote:
| Hey this is cool!
|
| I met people here in Australia doing similar work to spot whales
| during offshore gas exploration. It was basically a revolving IR
| camera looking for whale spouts
| burningChrome wrote:
| My first thought about reading this was how the Chinese whaling
| fleets would use this to their advantage. Not something I would
| be cool with and with any "good" technology, you have nefarious
| parties always looking to exploit it for their own ends.
| jamescrowley wrote:
| Iceland, Japan and Norway are the culprits still supporting
| whaling, not China - just fyi :)
| brk wrote:
| Short summary is that this isn't going to work. I was involved
| with a company doing some development on whale detection AI. The
| vast majority of the time you just don't see enough of the animal
| to make reliable detections. And that is in a best case scenario,
| add in movement of the boat/camera, waves, sunlight reflections,
| and having to ignore a vast majority of potential things on/in
| the water that can look kind of like whales, but are not whales.
| Dolphins in particular.
|
| This isn't a problem for AI/machine vision, IMO.
| ethan_smith wrote:
| Acoustic detection methods using hydrophone arrays can
| supplement visual AI by identifying whale vocalizations at
| distances of several kilometers even in poor visibility
| conditions.
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(page generated 2025-04-22 23:00 UTC)