What Does a Dying Coral Reef Sound Like? AI Is Developing an Answer
With sensors gathering reams of acoustic data on animal and ocean habitats, artificial intelligence is speeding up the process of assessing species loss.
Photographer: Courtesy of The Ocean Agency
Ben Williams sits quietly in his London apartment, waiting for a very specific sound to emerge from his headphones. He’ll know it when he hears it: Williams says the short, percussive bang “can shake you out of your skin.”
A PhD student in marine ecology at University College London, Williams is listening to underwater recordings captured in the Indo-Pacific for acoustic evidence of blast fishing, a destructive practice that uses explosives to kill or stun fish. His findings are critical to Google DeepMind — where Williams is a student researcher — which is using them to train an AI tool known as SurfPerch.