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The Current Transcript for May 14, 2024

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

SOUNDCLIP

SPEAKER: It can't taste the food, and it really is that human touch that ends up being the differentiator for a great restaurant versus a merely good restaurant.

MATT GALLOWAY: Computers can do many things very well. They don't have tastebuds, though, at least not yet. That fact has not stopped many people in the world of food and drink from turning, like so many industries, to artificial intelligence to help plot out the future. In 30 minutes, AI inspired craft beer, why the computer thinks that oysters and kiwi would taste great together, and whether chefs need to be worried about their livelihoods. Also this morning: women's sport has never been more of a force from the PWHL to a new women's soccer league. Coming up, what the arrival of the WNBA in this country will mean for women's basketball in Canada, and for the next generation of players. And later:

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SHANE GERO: Before we started asking questions about meaning, about why these animals are making sounds with each other, we need to understand the structure more completely.

MG: Shane Gero has spent decades trying to decode the language of sperm whales. He hasn't arrived at the point where he can understand what the school bus sized beasts are saying, but he has been able to build a phonetic alphabet of their clicks. In an hour, making sense of whale song, and why he thinks we would do well to listen closely rather than try to talk to the whales. But we begin with a familiar, terrifying feeling for those in the path of wildfires. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Wildfire season has started. Here’s what to expect

Guests: Megan Park, Jennifer Baltzer, Ed Struzik

MG: A fast-moving wildfire in northern British Columbia is threatening the town of Fort Nelson. Jim Adair is a volunteer firefighter there, and yesterday he was using heavy equipment to try to stop the fire from reaching the community.

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JIM ADAIR: I'm building a fire guard around the edge of town to help slow the fire and stuff like that. We basically blocked it the other night. We're waiting, it seems like. There's dangers, though. I'm not here to die for the town, but I will try my hardest to protect it. I'm not going to burn myself up for it.

MG: The Parker Lake fire is just over two kilometres from the northern edge of Fort Nelson.

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ROB FRASER: They're dropping water with helicopters. We've got local crews with [unclear] and equipment building firebreaks. The ground personnel are out there. Our firefighters, firefighters from all across northern British Columbia. It's all hands on deck and everybody is doing their best. But we're 400 kilometres from the closest town, and if the wind comes up, this will be over before anybody can get here. So, we're doing what we can with everything that we've got.

MG: That's mayor Rob Fraser of the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality, speaking with CBC News Network yesterday. Almost 5000 people from the town of Fort Nelson and the Fort Nelson First Nation have been forced from their homes. Megan Park is one of them. She's now in Dawson Creek. Megan, hello.

MEGAN PARK: Hi.

MG: How are you doing?

MEGAN PARK: I'm okay.

MG: That's a very considerate, 'okay.'

MEGAN PARK: Yeah. I'm okay. My family is safe, and, you know... It's a lot. It's stressful, but we're making the best of a a pretty, a pretty craptastic situation. So...

MG: Craptastic. Can you tell me about the moment that you heard it was time to evacuate? What was that like?

MEGAN PARK: Kind of surreal. I don't know if you know anything about last year, but everybody said last year we were going to get evacuated and rumours were flying and it never happened. So, I think when the talk started this year, people kind of just went, Oh, it's not going to happen, it's not going to happen. And then it did and it was like, Oh crap. Okay.

MG: How long did you have to get out when things went south?

MEGAN PARK: I think we heard-- not sure of the exact timeline--we heard that it was a possibility. And then we started, you know, packing and getting everything ready. And within, I think it was like an hour and a half, a couple hours, it was, it changed from a, Hey, be ready, to, Hey, you guys should start evacuating. So, we did. I have kids, so we just got up and we left. But I know, we still have some family, we still have some friends that are actually still in town, and they're helping fight the fires.

MG: Who did you leave with?

MEGAN PARK: I left with my boyfriend and our four kids and our two dogs and three cats and two birds and a guinea pig. [Laughs]

MG: That's a full car. And then what else were you able to cram into it?

MEGAN PARK: We ended up taking a couple of blankets. A couple of pillows. Some of my kids ended up with a couple changes of clothes. We ended up forgetting, like, three bags with the rest of our clothes. We had toothpaste, but no toothbrushes. Just random stuff, in all honesty.

MG: What does that? I mean, as you said, you were on the verge of having to leave last year. A lot of Canadians have never gone through something like that. What is it like to have that little time and just try and grab what you can and get out the door?

MEGAN PARK: It's nerve wracking. Like, I know some people-- like, the random things that were grabbed because you're just kind of in a panic situation. So, people have ended up with some pretty interesting stuff. One of my friends actually did a post on Facebook: 'Let us know the craziest thing that you packed?' At least it's a little bit of comedy in the midst of everything that's going on.

MG: What is the craziest thing that you packed?

MEGAN PARK: Me? Oh, I don't even know.

MG: You just get what you can get and get out the door.

MEGAN PARK: Just kind of grab stuff. Yeah, like I said, we did pack everything and then stuff still got forgotten, so...

MG: And so you're, what, five hours down the road in Dawson Creek now?

MEGAN PARK: Yep. We ended up in Dawson Creek, yes.

MG: And so, what do you know, if anything, about what's happening back home?

MEGAN PARK: I know that the mayor has been doing some live posts. I've seen a couple of those. I know there's been quite a few people that have posted their ring cams and their security footage so that we can still see what's going on in town, which is definitely appreciated. Some of the rumours that's... that's kind of been the issue. You get people going, Oh, I heard this. And, I heard this, and so-and-so told me this. And that's been nerve wracking, but...

MG: What about for your kids? What are they asking you?

MEGAN PARK: They mainly want to know when we get to go home. And that one's been kind of hard to navigate because I don't want to be like, Oh, everything's going to be perfect and we can go home in a few days. And just trying to keep them calm, keep them busy and focused on other things.

MG: What do you say to them? Because that's, that seems like a... I mean, you might ask that question, too. When do we get to go home? What do you say to your kids?

MEGAN PARK: Oh, right now I'm just telling them we're focusing on, you know, step one is getting here, being safe. And as soon as I know more, they will, too. Like, trying not to-- you know, keep them calm. Not letting them panic.

MG: And maybe not thinking about what might happen in the future. I mean, you kind of really have to be right there in that moment, right?

MEGAN PARK: Yeah. I know that I've kind of... besides, like checking for the mayor's updates and stuff, I've kind of just been ignoring everybody else. Like, what's going to happen is going to happen. There's nothing that I can do about it. So, it's just nerve wracking.

MG: Does it help that there are other people from town there with you?

MEGAN PARK: Yeah, there's actually, even in the place I'm staying, there's quite a few people from town. And it's good to see people. It's actually been really good to see everybody, know that everybody's safe. And you know, when you see the people that got out and... It's been, that's been good. [MG: Yeah.] Community, right?

MG: I wish you the very best. I mean, this is not a situation that anybody would want themselves to be in, but it feels like a situation that a lot of people may be in in days and weeks and months to come as fire season picks up. Megan, take care of yourself and your family.

MEGAN PARK: Absolutely. No. It's definitely been a lot. And that's the other little things. Like, I know I've had some friends that ended up with medical emergencies on top of everything. My van broke down and it's costing me an $800 I don't have. So, it's definitely been a lot for everybody, but I think everybody's trying to do the best that they can and just make it through.

MG: Thanks for talking to us and good luck. And again, take care of yourself.

MEGAN PARK: Absolutely. Appreciate it.

MG: Thanks, Megan. Megan Park was forced to leave her home in Fort Nelson, British Columbia. As you heard, she is now in Dawson Creek with her family and whatever else they could cram into the car as they rolled out of town. 2023 was the worst fire season ever recorded in Canada, and the conditions for 2024 aren't looking much better. One of the issues is the number of so-called zombie fires that have been burning over the winter. Jennifer Baltzer is a biology professor at Wilfrid Laurier University and the Canada Research Chair in Forests and Global Change. Jennifer, good morning to you.

JENNIFER BALTZER: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What is a zombie fire?

JENNIFER BALTZER: So, it's an overwintering fire. It's a type of holdover fire that starts in one fire season. So, in this case in 2023, and is able to overwinter under the snow. So, we see these fires smouldering in peat soils. That's common in forests in northern Canada. We see these fires smouldering in the roots and the burls of the trees. So, it's basically, you know, very slow burning, smouldering, underneath the soil, or underneath the roots of trees in the soil, and then blanketed in snow during the winter. And then they, you know, they flare up or they can flare up early in the spring. And we're seeing quite a number of these flaring up and causing some challenges. Throughout Western Canada, there were, you know, an extraordinary number of overwintering fires that were documented in British Columbia and Alberta, the Northwest Territories, this winter. And so, we're seeing that kind of raise their heads now that the snow is gone and we have these warm, dry conditions.

MG: B.C. Wildfire are saying that the Park Lake fire isn't a zombie fire, but a couple of others are. And as you mentioned, the conditions are such that--I mean, the name says everything. They're zombies. They're laying there waiting and kind of rising like the undead. What is it that can be done to mitigate them?

JENNIFER BALTZER: Well, I mean, they're a real challenge to monitor. There's not necessarily a lot of signs of, you know, a lot of signs of where they are. There's certainly, you know, we see smoke coming up through the snow. Many of these can be in fairly remote locations that are hard to access. And so, you know, I think, you know, from what I was seeing this winter, fire managers were working to deal with overwintering fires when they were in places that might cause challenges for communities.

MG: What else is going on? I mean, it feels again like fire season is earlier and earlier. What's happening--I mean, there's fires in B.C. right now and Manitoba, as well. What else is contributing to what feels like an early fire season?

JENNIFER BALTZER: Well, I mean, ultimately, it's a climate change signal. We're seeing the climate warming and drying, and what this means is more fuel on the landscape. Longer fire seasons, longer growing seasons, which means longer fire seasons. So, when we have these hot, dry conditions that go hand in hand with climate warming, we can expect to see more fire on the landscape. And, you know, last summer was the first summer where global temperatures exceeded one point five degrees above pre-industrial averages. And so, you know, the fire season we saw that played out last summer is reflective of those changes in climate. So, that's a really big part of it, is this warming, drying situation that we are facing and that we're going to continue to face moving forward. Other challenges are, you know, fuel build-ups on the landscape that have happened as a result of very effective fire suppression, of forest management decisions. So, there's, you know, lots of work to be done figuring out how we can reduce fuels on the landscape around communities to help keep folks safe.

MG: We're going to talk more about that and what might be done in that idea of, you know, living with fire, if this is something that we're going to be dealing with. But this is only-- I'm talking to you on the 14th of May. What are you expecting for the season ahead?

JENNIFER BALTZER: I mean, the forecast particularly for Western Canada, is another hot, dry summer and water levels are already very, very low. You know, last fall I was standing on the bottom of Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories, looking back at the shoreline. There are these, the water levels are unprecedentedly low across much of Western Canada. And then snowpack was really low, as well. You know, only 50 or 60 per cent of normal in many places. And so, these, you know, these drought conditions create, you know, a lot of challenge because we have, you know, the drier the soils and the plants are, the more fuel there is on the landscape. And so, really then you need ignitions to be able to lead to wildfire on the landscape. And so, you know, we'll have to see what plays out in terms of precipitation that comes along. But there's certainly, kind of the deck is stacked to have another wildfire season that is going to be challenging.

MG: I have a feeling we'll talk again as that season unfolds. Jennifer, thank you for this.

JENNIFER BALTZER: Yeah, you're very welcome.

MG: Jennifer Baltzer is the Canada Research Chair in Forests and Global Change and a biology professor at Wilfrid Laurier University. There are massive fires burning in western Manitoba, in Alberta. People in Fort McMurray are watching a blaze that's 16 kilometres or so from their community. Ed Struzik has been tracking Canada's fire seasons for years. He is a fellow at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy at Queen's University, and his most recent book is Dark Days at Noon: The Future of Fire. Ed, good morning to you.

ED STRUZIK: Good morning.

MG: You know, it was almost exactly to the day a year ago that you and I were standing on your front lawn in front of your house in Edmonton, talking about fires. Talking about the skies being orange, talking about what we were going to be getting into last year and what might be coming in the years ahead. What does that tell you? That here we are again in May talking about fires.

ED STRUZIK: Well, you know, just to give you a heads up of what happened, as you probably well know, we had the biggest fire season ever in Canada last year. And in that little forest that I took you down below our house, we had four fires in that little forest last summer that required the fire department to come. So, you know, just about no place in Canada, you know, apart from maybe P.E.I. and Nunavut are immune from the fire situation. We are now in a new paradigm of fire.

MG: Is it true? I mean, it feels like this, but does the evidence show that the fires are starting earlier and earlier in the year?

ED STRUZIK: They are. Yeah. In fact, and sometimes, you know, it's up to three, four weeks now. And the fire crews are starting a month ahead of time and hanging on a month extra. And to just show, to give you a really good example of just how out of whack it really is, is that two years ago, I was in, just south of Fort Simpson at a Laurier research site that was being handed over to the Dene who live in that part of that world. And in October, late October, when there's normally about a foot of snow on the ground and it's minus 20 or 30 degrees, a wildfire came through and burned that research centre down. That's just mind boggling.

MG: We've already seen smoky skies in Calgary. The smoke is drifting south across the border into Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well. What do we--and you and I talked about this last year-- what do you think we're going to be seeing when it comes to air quality in the summer ahead?

ED STRUZIK: It's, you know, if you look at the Canadian-- the Canadian Forest Service did a wonderful study just earlier this year where they predicted a quadrupling of wildfire activity by the end of the century and ten times more fire in certain areas of the country. So, what that tells us is that the very hazy, lazy, smoky days of summer that are destroying our barbecue seasons in the backyard are going to come more often. And we've got to prepare ourselves for that because, you know, smoke, wildfire smoke is the equivalent of inhaling tobacco smoke. It's not good for you.

MG: What does that preparation look like? Again, it's more than an annoyance that you have to, you know, coincide because the barbecuing sitting outside is not going to work out for you. What else do we need to be thinking about when it comes to the dangerous air that we're breathing because of these wildfires?

ED STRUZIK: Well, you know, for people like me and my wife, we can afford air purifiers on the house, and I think we have four or five. But not all people can afford them. They're rather expensive. And I think that what we have to consider is that we've got a lot of public buildings, such as schools, that are largely empty in the summertime. And perhaps those places could be retrofitted to have the air purified. And so, those people who cannot afford purifiers could go there. And it could actually be a social event, you know. Lonely people gathering in a schoolhouse in the summertime and, not only escaping the fire, but conversing with their neighbours and catching up and figuring out, you know, how they can bide their time. I think it could actually be very valuable from a social point of view.

MG: Last year felt like a wakeup call for many communities. And it's not just the communities that were burned by the fire, but also communities that were far away and saw the smoke drifting down into them. They thought perhaps that this was something off in the distance. And it turned out that the effects of those wildfires were right in their backyard. What do you think has changed since you and I spoke last year? When it comes to how we think about these fires and how we deal with the fires.

ED STRUZIK: Well, you know, I've been travelling across the country. I'm going to be speaking at the Wye Marsh in, you know, a place where you don't expect to see fire, but they've asked me to talk about fire. I talked to the Wildlife Society in British Columbia earlier this year and to the Niagara Natural Area Organization. And I've been speaking to people right across the country, and you really get the sense that they really want to know, what can we do about this? And, because they feel helpless. They, you know, last summer and several summers before that have alerted them to the fact that this is not normal and it's going to continue to get worse. And they want to be prepared, but they don't know how to do.

MG: What do you say? What do you say to them?

ED STRUZIK: Well, I think, you know, there's a number of things that they can do as people who do live in the forest. And there's many people in the country that, you know, you have to fire smart your homes. You have to look at your landscaping. You know, you saw my house, and I showed you how there is, you know, four white spruce trees and wonderful junipers against our wood framed house. And I have to consider the fact-- I, you know, I'm not quite as in harm's way as anybody else, because probably the fire department can handle it. But those people, you know, who are far away from fire services have to take that into account. So, and there are a number of very good programs. But the problem in this country is that most of the communities in the boreal forest really just don't have the tax base to be able to make themselves more resilient. So, I think we have to kind of have a national program where we can fund these communities and help them make themselves more resilient to fire.

MG: I'm going to let you go. But this is this idea that we spoke about, that you've talked about for a long time. That we're going to have to learn how to live with fire. Right?

ED STRUZIK: Yes.

MG: That this is something that we will not be able to escape.

ED STRUZIK: No, no. And like I said earlier, if you're going to have a quadrupling of fire in the Boreal Forest and that covers most of Canada, it's going to get worse. It's not going to get better. And there's no sign that the climate is going to cool anytime soon.

MG: Ed, we'll speak again. In the meantime, thank you very much for this.

ED STRUZIK: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Ed Struzik is a fellow at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy at Queen's University. His most recent book is Dark Days at Noon: The Future of Fire. The CBC News with the latest on what is going on when it comes to those wildfires, is coming up next. And then:

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SPEAKER: These were not dishes that would have been familiar with our patrons. So, these were all new dishes in any case. We tried to kind of take a little bit of a scientific experimental view on this.

[Music: Instrumental]

MG: Some microbreweries and restaurants are experimenting with AI. Turning to artificial intelligence for ideas of what to put on the menu. Things like the robo-beer, hazy pale ale, or a pairing of kiwi and oyster. Might sound like a marketing gimmick. Many people believe this could be the future of food. What does it mean for the future of chefs? We will talk about that coming up in six minutes. My name is Matt Galloway, and this is The Current. Stay with us.

[Music: Fades up]

Strawberries with ketchup? Chefs turn to AI for new ideas

Guests: Isaiah Archer

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current. Artificial intelligence has made its way into nearly every part of our daily lives--checking our grammar to suggesting what to eat for dinner. And now, food and beverage companies are turning to AI to help create new flavours and menu items. Svante Hampf is the founder of the Kaffa Roastery in Helsinki, Finland. The cafe asked ChatGPT to help come up with a new blend.

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SVANTE HAMPF: AI came up with the idea to blend four different coffees, so that was a bit different. The result, compared to similar coffees that we used, it was as good or better. The coffee turned out super nice. It's sweet. It's chocolatey, there's some dark berries. Hint of bergamot. And we're pleased.

MG: They've named the blend AI-conic. Get it? They see a promising future in using AI generated recipes in the cafe.

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SVANTE HAMPF: I think it's natural to start using AI when crafting a coffee or doing a blend. Our customers think it's a really good coffee. I think they're more thrilled about the idea of using AI. I think it's just natural to use the tools that are available to do a better coffee.

MG: Here in Canada, companies are jumping in to use those AI tools as well. Whistle Buoy Brewery in Victoria used ChatGPT to create its first AI generated brew. Isaiah Archer is a partner with the brewery. Isaiah, good morning.

ISAIAH ARCHER: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thanks for being here. Why would you want to ask ChatGPT how to develop a beer recipe?

ISAIAH ARCHER: We released our Robo Beer Hazy Pale Ale last year around this time. It was really just based out of our curiosity. Just kind of understood that these chat bots were now available to the public, and I was just curious about it myself and was kind of playing around with it. And in a meeting that I had with our brewer, when we were coming up with some beer concepts for the upcoming months, we thought, let's just, you know, try this out and see what happens. So, it was really just based out of, there's this novel new technology and we'd like to experiment with it.

MG: And so what did you do? What did you ask ChatGPT?

ISAIAH ARCHER: We knew we were going to create a hazy pale ale recipe, and instead of just Matt, our brewer, using his knowledge and experience to write one, we thought, let's ask this thing if it can create a hazy pale ale recipe that we actually believe would be worth making. So, we said, 'Create a recipe for a hazy pale ale-- light, fluffy, tropical.' And then kind of said to adjust the scale of the recipe to the system size that we use. And maybe 10 or 15 seconds later, there was a full recipe and then full brewing instructions in front of us. So, just the speed in which it was able to do that was quite alarming. I will say, it did kind of make a few errors as far as the ratios that we would normally use in our grain bail. But, you know, we're using this in conjunction with humans that have a lot of experience and expertise. So, our brewer was able to sort of tinker it a little bit to make sure that it was actually going to work, and we would be able to have a beer that was sellable. But then after that, we really tried to stick with the AI generated recipe as closely as we possibly could.

MG: What does the beer taste like? You call it Robo Beer.

ISAIAH ARCHER: Yeah. Like, for us, if anyone's followed our brewery on social media or any of that, it's pretty clear that we don't take ourselves too seriously. It is pretty on the nose. So, yeah, it was sort of like a New England pale ale or Northeast pale ale. So, it has some of those citrus tropical pineapple character, along with the use of lactose, which is generally used as like a sweetener in that style of, like, hazy IPA or pale ale. It was, like, a light yellow colour. Very hazy, soft mouth feel, a little bit of sweetness, balanced with some bitterness and had some of those fruity notes. It was pretty much just like right along the lines of what we would expect a good hazy pale ale to taste like.

MG: So, it was actually, it was actually good?

ISAIAH ARCHER: It was great. I won't say it was better necessarily than the stuff that we come up with ourself. Our brewery is very small batch, so we're able to constantly experiment with different recipes and release different things. I'm not going to say it was like, this is better than what we could do, because I don't think that's true. But it was interesting to see how quickly it could come up with something that was up to the level.

MG: Did you use, I mean, aside from the name, did you use the idea of AI as a marketing tool for this? Like, did you say to people, look, you can drink this beer where the idea of it was cooked up by the machine?

ISAIAH ARCHER: That was the whole point. [Laughs] It was this was a marketing gimmick. I'm going to be like, quite upfront about that.

MG: Honesty is a good policy here.

ISAIAH ARCHER: Yeah. I'm not suggesting that we're using AI and we're integrating it into our, you know, our workflows at the brewery. It's, you know, a tool that anyone can log on to if they have a Wi-Fi connection and play around with. And we thought, wow, this is interesting. This is new. There's-- I'm hearing about this everywhere in the news. It's in the zeitgeist. Let's try to take advantage of this. But it was, again, it was like something that we thought we could jump on as an opportunity to try something and have a little bit of fun with it. We also have an animator that's a friend of ours that kind of helps develop some of our marketing videos. I kind of gave him the challenge, like, can you use AI tools to generate a little short film animation? And so, he used like, Midjourney and some other tools to develop a little very silly on-the-nose video about how we were working with robots to make beer. So, for us, it was a very light-hearted approach and more in the spirit of interest and experimentation than to say that we're advocating for this technology. That's certainly not our stance, but our stance is to remain open minded and to use the tools that are available to us and at least understand how this stuff works. If it's going to be ubiquitous, we ought to know how to how to use it.

MG: What did Matt, your brewer, think? Did he think that his job was on the line because the machine can now make beer?

ISAIAH ARCHER: So, we haven't used it since in recipe development. His job requires hands, and the AI doesn't have those. So, you know, for sure him, I think he felt like at least he had that going for him. But yeah, I think he doesn't take it as, he's going to lose his job to the robots.

MG: What about people-- I mean, people take their beer really seriously. Craft beer [ISAIAH: yeah.] has a community in which, I don't want to say there are rules, but, I mean, people certainly, they get invested in it and they discuss changes to things. Were people are pleased with this invention? Or did that community feel like this was a step too far?

ISAIAH ARCHER: You know, there's so many craft breweries these days that in my mind, like, if you want like a good traditional, you know, classically well-made beer, we do a lot of those. There's literally thousands and thousands of breweries around the world that are doing that. We think that this is supposed to be fun. We're very okay with playing around with stuff, as long as we know that there's integrity behind it and the quality of the product meets the strict standards that we have.

MG: Did everybody get that joke?

ISAIAH ARCHER: There was certainly a couple of people online that were pretty pissed about it, to be honest. There's like craft beer influencers and stuff. It's a whole thing. There was a few people that were like, you know, like, normally I like you guys, but this is a step too far. Like, you really shouldn't be putting people's jobs on the line. And I think like, that was very much in the discourse of the time and still is, rightfully so, that like, we ought to be really careful about this stuff and how we're using it and why we're using it. And so, yeah, there was people that really didn't appreciate it. But I think most people that if they had been following us, they kind of understood that, these people are just having some fun.

MG: One of the things that--you do this as an experiment, but it sounds like you've learned that human touch is really important. One of the things that people are worried about is that things like AI will take, you know, us humans out of it. That we won't be needed anymore because the machine can do just about everything. But it seems like you've kind of understood that you can do both. But the people are really still key to the work that you do.

ISAIAH ARCHER: Yeah. I think, like, when you talk about the craft beer community, the community part is really the point. We're a public space. We're sort of a, kind of like a living room in our city here in Victoria, and people come and sit at the table with their friends and family every day. And it's the authentic human connection that makes what we do special. And I think makes it good. And it's that human touch. And the fact that Matt can go out and sit at a table and talk to people about, you know, the quality of the beer. Or, someone says, Oh, this beer is-- we make a beer with spirulina and it's blue. And so, he can like, talk to people about, Why did you do that? And kind of, they can peer into his mind and, you know, tour people through the space if he chooses to do that. And, you know, those are all things that require the human touch and the human element. So, I think that part of it is like the best part of it. We don't really feel threatened in that way, because I think we have a lot of confidence in the fact that, you know, it is really the connection and the relationships of the community here that make it special.

MG: Isaiah, thank you very much.

ISAIAH ARCHER: Thank you very much.

MG: Isaiah Archer is a partner with Whistle Buoy Brewery. He was in Victoria, British Columbia. Larry Mccabe is the owner of Café Bouffon, a French inspired restaurant in Stratford, Ontario. They held a tasting event using AI inspired food combinations. Larry, hello to you.

LARRY MCCABE: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What was this? This AI generated menu event?

LARRY MCCABE: Well, it was called Salon AI, a tech enhanced interactive event. It was part of the Provocation Ideas Festival. I was approached by Mark Rosenfeld about doing something to collaborate for their first launch in Stratford. And, of course, AI was in the news at that point. We wanted to do something provocative, and the question was, will our next master chef merge from artificial intelligence? Or, is taste a uniquely human phenomenon?

MG: And so, what did you do with that brief?

LARRY MCCABE: Well, it was sort of an interesting thing for the team to work on. So, our CAO worked on the prompt here, which was pretty simple. It was: we are hosting an event that invites guests to a blind tasting of canopies and cocktail pairings. Half will be curated by our executive chef and half by AI. And prompted it to create four French canopies based on the ones provided by our chef with recipes. And that just sort of let it out. And we kind of chased it down after that.

MG: What were some of the pairings on the menu?

LARRY MCCABE: For example, there was a creamy lobster vol-au-vent, with butter poached lobster and herb mayo with puff pastry, against an escargot and mushroom vol-au-vent in a garlicky butter pastry. The most provocative one was the one where we did actually have the AI pairing. And we also prompted them to have, for my sommelier, Steve Doyle to pair with wines and non-alcoholic beverages-- the beet brined eggs with yolk mousse and dill versus the beet carpaccio with goat cheese mousse. And that one, the AI won.

MG: I was gonna say, could people tell? And how did the chef's creation or the chef's choice compare to what AI had cooked up?

LARRY MCCABE: The humans won, three to one, on this. So, there were four pairings and we were trying to limit it so that both the chef was not showing their hand to the apprentices. And I didn't know which pairings were which when we went into the event, because I really wanted to see whether there was anything to this for us to use at the company.

MG: So, what did you ask the artificial intelligence? I mean, I think for a chef, [LARRY: Yeah.] she or he might, like, have an idea that this flavour would go with this. We've used this before. This could be something that's--- what did you ask the AI?

LARRY MCCABE: It just basically was to match these pairings that the chef had created with recipes of their own. Based on that, they came up with pairings with the recipes. We tried to keep it so that these were not dishes that would have been familiar with our patrons. So, these were all new dishes in any case. So, we tried to kind of take a little bit of a scientific experimental view on this. And the apprentices did not know, and we tried to keep the paper on which the recipes were given to them exactly the same kind of writing, just to see what happened from that.

MG: Why did you want to do this? I mean, you were asked to do it, but why-- are you interested in AI? Why would you say yes to something like this?

LARRY MCCABE: I am interested in it. And I'm interested in other aspects of the food industry particularly about how it might be able to reduce waste in our company for environmental reasons and help in sourcing things. But for this, it was really because I think, you know, anyone who has worked in a professional kitchen or with professional chefs will know, the human touch is such an important and vital part of what happens with the dish that hits your table. I'll give you an example. We went to, on a tour of French restaurants in Toronto, and there was a restaurant that had very good food. The presentation was fantastic, but the seasoning was not there. And that's where I think it's very hard to imagine artificial intelligence because you...

MG: It can't taste the food.

LARRY MCCABE: It can't taste the food. And it really is that human touch that ends up being the differentiator for a great restaurant versus a merely good restaurant.

MG: Well, what do you think the-- you hinted a couple of things. What do you think AI can do in the food world? How could it transform the food industry?

LARRY MCCABE: We still use it to a certain extent to generate ideas at the beginning of our menu change process. So, we typically change our menus two or three times a year, both at Cafe Bouffon and Pazzo Pizzeria, where we have two restaurants at the same place. And we find, you know, chefs are under a lot of pressure to do different things. And we were using it as a tool to generate a bunch of ideas and then narrow that down into kind of, things that were worth pursuing. And I think that that actually was very effective. We ended up with a dish on our pizzeria menu last year that was actually created from a prompt from ChatGPT.

MG: And that--you're doing that because you said chefs are really busy. That they might not have the time and the space to be able to come up with those ideas on their own?

LARRY MCCABE: Well, it's just that they sometimes, like writers, they come up against writer's block. They, you know, they've been working with food for a very long time. And all of us from time to time need a little bit of a push to get outside of our comfort zones. And I think that that's valuable to a certain extent. You know, it's interesting with recipes, they're not things that can be copyrighted. So, it's fairly scientific, really, combinations that work in recipes through time. We really see the use in just, you know, getting over that hump occasionally. Chefs are under a lot of pressure to be original, as well. I just want to have them be provided with tools that may get them over that hump.

MG: Do they see it as a tool, or do they see it as an existential threat?

LARRY MCCABE: Well, it is. And that's the problem, is that I think that there is--they did feel sort of threated. And I really did push it, because I wanted to just say, this is just a fun event. And it's an attempt. And the idea of a Salon, as well, is sort of an updated idea of what the French salon is about.

MG: But you said, you say they feel threatened?

LARRY MCCABE: They felt, I think, a little uncomfortable with, you know-- Courtney Noble, our head chef, is a fantastic chef. Trained at the Stratford Chef school. So, it is sort of, you know... And I think you find that across many kinds of areas, that there is a wariness about using these kinds of tools. So, I wanted to take the pressure off. It was supposed to be just a fun event, and that's actually how it rolled out in reality.

MG: Will you keep using AI in future?

LARRY MCCABE: It is going to be transformative in our industry. It's certainly being used in social media by almost every company that I'm aware of in the restaurant space. I do hope that it can help with, you know, not even just defining recipes, but sourcing materials in, you know, in proximity. And possibly prompting for substitute of ingredients that may be a little cheaper or, you know, there's a lot of pressure on hospitality companies now, especially post-pandemic. And if that can help with the way that we run the restaurants, I'm happy to use it. But I think the chefs will always be core to what happens.

MG: Larry, thank you very much.

LARRY MCCABE: You're very welcome, Matt.

MG: Larry Mccabe is the owner of Café Bouffon, a restaurant in Stratford, Ontario. Bernard Lahousse is co-founder of the company Foodpairing. This company specialises in AI generated food pairings. He's with us from Ghent in Belgium. Bernard, hello to you.

BERNARD LAHOUSSE: Hi. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thanks for being here. What is, in the context of everything we've been talking about, what does your company, Foodpairing, do?

BERNARD LAHOUSSE: Well, actually, we help chefs and food companies to develop better products faster. So, we have analyzed, over the last 15 years, more than 21,000 ingredients. So, you can actually make a computer taste the products and have the chemical makeup. And we have created eight algorithms that then can predict what are the best combinations.

MG: How does the computer taste the products?

BERNARD LAHOUSSE: Well, you have equipment that actually can analyze the aroma compounds, the taste compounds, the texture of a product. So, you digitise the food product. And once the computer has a digitised product, it can actually generate combinations, but it can also generate recipes.

MG: So, it breaks it down to--I mean once it's analysed--it breaks it down to the compounds and then figures out which compounds would work with other compounds.

BERNARD LAHOUSSE: Yeah, indeed. Like for example, the first combination that we ever launched was a kiwi with oyster combination. And it combined because it had certain molecules in common that smelled like the sea.

MG: Why would somebody use something like this.

BERNARD LAHOUSSE: Well, if you look at chefs, as the previous speaker told, chefs are under pressure. Consumers want new exciting foods. So, like ten years ago, a bit more, you had El Bulli, the number one at that time, that closed his restaurant for six months to test thousands of combinations. Chefs don't have the time now to do that. So, it adds efficiency, and it adds creativity. For the food industry, if they launch products on the market, only one in ten products is successful. So, our AI models can actually predict which products will be successful on the market.

MG: How often are you surprised with what the AI generates?

BERNARD LAHOUSSE: Well, so, we analyse every day about a hundred new products from around the world. Some products can be very specific, like ants or certain insects or certain kimchi from South Korea. There are always surprising combinations in there. Yeah.

MG: Give me, I mean, you mentioned the one with the kiwi and the oysters. I mean, give me a couple of other examples of interesting pairings that artificial intelligence has cooked up.

BERNARD LAHOUSSE: For example, for [unclear,] a restaurant in Spain, we did a cauliflower grape and nutmeg desserts or, [unclear] with strawberry, chocolate with bacon. Maybe that's a more obvious combination. You can add coffee powder to pumpkin soup or hazelnut to green beans or strawberry and ketchup. All of these combinations come out of this analysis.

MG: Does the AI always get it right? Or are there things that it creates, and you actually taste them and you're like, Oh my goodness, this is terrible.

BERNARD LAHOUSSE: Well, because we have a domain specific AI, while ChatGPT is more, very generic. We created, over the last 15 years, because we have the data on the chemical analysis, what comes out always works. But still, what the chef will actually do with it will be influenced by the personality of the chef or his experience.

MG: What, to you, is most exciting about this?

BERNARD LAHOUSSE: There are a lot of challenges that are in the future. For example, climate change, the health crisis. So, the big advantage of having AI on top of food industry is because it helps food companies, chefs to move much faster into healthy foods. For example, with Imperial College in London, we worked for low-income families with obese children. And the model asked, What are food that they liked? Of course, they liked the burgers and the pizzas. But then the model was able to, step by step, nudge them into fruits and vegetables. So, it can help those families to eat more healthy.

MG: How would it do that? How would the model do that in a way that doctors or parents or, you know, other people couldn't?

BERNARD LAHOUSSE: Well, the model also asked what the family likes. And based on what the family likes, the model actually can extract, what are the chemical compositions that drives the liking of that family. And then it can look for other products that also have those chemicals. And when it starts to nudge, it will also look for something quite similar to the flavour profile that they know. But, step by step, it will open the door to fruits and vegetables that they don't know. But to the flavour learning, people actually like to learn those products.

MG: What sort of pushback have you had from people in the food world? I can think of, I mean, French chefs in particular, tradition is so important in much of French cooking. It changes, obviously. But there is a heart of tradition, and even changing the slightest thing in some of those traditional menus can get you in a lot of trouble. What kind of pushback have you had from chefs to this idea?

BERNARD LAHOUSSE: So, if we started 15 years ago, we clearly had a division between a younger group of chefs, which really open to use new tools, and a more older generation. But it's also more like, country specific. Like the Spanish chefs are much more open than the French chefs. The U.S. and Canadian chefs are also much more open because they have less of a culinary tradition. But we also see now, in France and in Italy, also more and more chefs using these tools to make new, exciting combinations.

MG: What do you think we lose in using a tool like this?

BERNARD LAHOUSSE: I don't think we lose anything.

MG: You don't think we lose anything at all?

BERNARD LAHOUSSE: No. You gain efficiency. You gain creativity. Now, a chef, when they make a combination, they will start from what they know. And maybe by accident, find something new. What if you have a tool that actually can taste all the products in the world and can combine a specific product you have in your market with something which is in South Korea, which you would never think of combining. So, you're actually opening new doors for better experiences, more delicious food.

MG: I guess, just finally, the thing that a lot of people think that we're going to lose are people. That the chef will then essentially just become a line cook where they don't have to dream up these ideas. They are just told to combine this with this, with this, with this. And it's like you're building from, you know, you're building Lego or something like that. You're not building food. Do you worry that people's jobs will disappear? Or at least the creativity of the jobs will disappear with something like this.

BERNARD LAHOUSSE: The AI can give you solutions. It's still up to you to decide which of the solutions that you will take. Like, the tool is now 15 years online and still chef one versus two will create something completely different. So, I don't think it will limit the creativity. On the contrary.

MG: It's a fascinating idea. Thank you for telling us about it.

BERNARD LAHOUSSE: Thank you.

MG: Bernard Lahousse is the co-founder of the AI company Foodpairing. Well, coming up after your regional update:

SOUNDCLIP

SHANE GERO: The cultural diversity is really what makes the richness of a human life in different places. And that seems to be true for sperm whales, too. So, that is one place where we do have really good evidence that these animals are using these codas to mediate their social relationships.

[Music: Instrumental]

MG: Researchers have spent almost two decades studying the sperm whale, listening in on their vocalizations with underwater microphones. And now, a team of scientists are hearing repeatable patterns or codas in those clicking sounds, bringing us closer to understanding the building blocks of whale communication. What could the whales be saying? Why should we listen to them? And why should we listen to them instead of actually trying to figure out how to communicate with them? My conversation with the Canadian marine biologist Shane Gero coming up in ten minutes. My name is Matt Galloway, and this is The Current. We're back in 90 seconds. Stick around.

[Music fades up]

WNBA coming to Canada

Guests: Christine Hyde, Maya Robinson

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current. Women's professional basketball is Coming to Canada.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I think women are amazing and I'm so excited to go watch my first WNBA game.

VOICE 2: Women can do anything that men can do, so bring it on! Yay for the women! Yes, I like it.

MG: Bring it on. The new Toronto club will be the league's 14th team, the first outside the United States. WNBA's games are expected to start in May of 2026. It is a date my next two guests are very excited about. Christine Hyde is the lead assistant coach of the Waterloo Warriors women's basketball team at the University of Waterloo. Also a former pro herself, she played division 1 basketball at college in the United States, as well as in professional leagues across Europe. And Amaya Robinson is 15 years old and plays for the under 15 division of Team Ontario at the Royal Crown Academy School in Scarborough. She will also be one of Coach Christine Hyde's players this summer and they both join us now. Good morning to you both.

CHRISTINE HYDE: Good morning.

AMAYA ROBINSON: Good morning.

MG: Amaya, what was your reaction in hearing the news about the WNBA coming to Canada?

AMAYA ROBINSON: I was really shocked that they finally made this decision and I was really excited, as well.

MG: Shocked? Why?

AMAYA ROBINSON: I don't know. I just didn't think they would make it possible this soon.

MG: I'm going to come back to that in a minute, because there are a lot of people who've been waiting for a long time for this. Christine, what about you? What was your reaction?

CHRISTINE HYDE: My reaction was, it's about time. There's a lot of great basketball, and I think it's about time that we have the platform to show it.

MG: Why do you think it's taken so long?

CHRISTINE HYDE: I'm not sure. But if anything that Toronto showed when we sold out when they came in the summer and then when we sold out again in Edmonton, is that there is a lot of support here for women's basketball.

MG: Yeah. There were these exhibition games where the crowds were, I mean, it was wild to see the number of people who were there and the energy in the rooms. What do you think that said about the potential here?

CHRISTINE HYDE: I think that showed the longing. That what we've been saying has been ringing true all along. That there is support, you just have to bring the platform.

MG: Amaya, how long have you been playing basketball?

CHRISTINE HYDE: I've been playing basketball for about eight years now.

MG: What do you love about the sport?

AMAYA ROBINSON: I love everything about the sport. Like, the way it makes me feel. I feel like I get to express myself on the court.

MG: How do? I mean? Can you describe what that feels like? When you are on the court and you are doing your thing, what does that feel like?

AMAYA ROBINSON: I just feel free because I get to do me and show everybody what I could do.

MG: When did you know you were good?

AMAYA ROBINSON: Probably about, like, two years ago when people started telling me, like, my potential and how good I've become.

MG: What do they say to you?

AMAYA ROBINSON: They mostly encourage me to, like, do better and not just settle about what people tell me. So, just keep going harder and harder every day.

MG: And so, when they would say that to you, they would see something in you, but they want you to kind of light a spark under yourself. How would you respond?

AMAYA ROBINSON: I've just got to show what I could do and push and push every day.

MG: The arrival of this team, Christine, is a big deal in this moment. And part of it is because, we were saying earlier in the program, it feels like women's sports is at a level now that it hasn't been in past. You're in the sport, you've been playing for a long time and you're involved in coaching, as well. How do you see that?

AMAYA ROBINSON: So, I'm going to challenge you there. I think women's basketball has always been at this level. There's always been great women basketball players, and the level of play has always been there. We just didn't always have the platform, the resources, the social media now, the televised games to show it. But the level of play and the great women basketball that's before now and to come after, has always been here.

MG: I like that you challenged that. Tell me more about that. You've been playing for a long time, how have you seen women's basketball change?

AMAYA ROBINSON: I think I've seen women take more risk. We used to play very safe and it's just the rivalries that come around and those are not being technicals anymore. We're allowed to just play and now show emotion. More emotion during the game. I think that's also changed and I think people want to see that. I think why we were considered boring before is because we were so reined in by, Oh, it's not ladylike. Or, This is not a man's game. So, you know, they try to make it very pretty, I would say. But us now being able to show those emotions and play risky on the basketball court, I think is what captivates most people.

MG: What does that risky play look like? I mean, I think anybody who's seen the WNBA or seen, you know, Canada's team play will tell you that the level of play is sky high. But when you say risky, what does that mean?

AMAYA ROBINSON: I think playing physical, shooting deep threes, yelling in someone's face, a little chest bump here and there. I think all those are risky. One-on-one plays, you see, are more prevalent now. Being allowed to just play freely and be fluid with the basketball and not just rigid pass, cut, and play. It looks like poetry in motion out there.

MG: Amaya, does that sound familiar? That idea of poetry in motion, but also that you can be who you want to be when you play? That there's not some sort of prescribed way that you have to play women's basketball.

AMAYA ROBINSON: Yes. I think she's right that we can express ourselves. A lot of people judge the way how we play, because they don't expect us to be all loud and like extra with what we're doing.

MG: How have you been judged, do you think? I mean, what's been challenging for you playing basketball?

AMAYA ROBINSON: Well, like, when you get, like, a good basket and like, you like screaming somebody's face. They're not expecting women to do that. Or like, when you get a big block or like a big basket, they're just expecting you to be calm and chill and act pretty about it.

MG: And when you do that, do you feel like you can be yourself?

AMAYA ROBINSON: Yes.

MG: Yeah. Christine, we saw, in March Madness, the women's version of the NCAA basketball tournament, this year was incredibly popular because of Caitlin Clark. But that rivalry that she had, I mean, she's this, you know, former NCAA player. She plays her first WNBA game tonight for Indiana. But the rivalry she had against Angel Reese, a fellow player, kind of speaks to exactly what you're talking about, right?

AMAYA ROBINSON: Yes. So, I think Angel Reese is the epitome of what I'm speaking of. Just going out there and playing with heart, playing with grit, playing with so much emotion, playing with so much energy and physicality. So, yeah, exactly that. Angel Reese is the perfect example of that.

MG: Amaya, do you have a favourite WNBA team?

AMAYA ROBINSON: Yes, the Las Vegas Aces.

MG: And what do you love about them?

AMAYA ROBINSON: I love the way how they play as a team. They always encourage each other and they play together.

MG: And what about a player?

AMAYA ROBINSON: I like Asia Wilson.

MG: Who-- for people who don't know-- who is she and why is she so great?

AMAYA ROBINSON: She's always leading her team. She's also MVP. She's just a great player.

MG: Do you model yourself after? I mean, you're your own player and you can figure out your own path forward, but is she somebody that you model yourself after?

AMAYA ROBINSON: Yes. Not so much her playstyle, but like, her. The way how she encourages her team. And being a leader.

MG: Yeah. How are you a leader on the court?

AMAYA ROBINSON: By telling my teammates what to do. Like, killing them where to go and encouraging them even when they mess up.

MG: Even when they mess up.

AMAYA ROBINSON: Yes.

MG: Christina, Amaya is going to be playing for you later in the summer, right?

CHRISTINE HYDE: Yeah.

MG: What do you see in her as a leader?

CHRISTINE HYDE: She's my point guard. So, essentially, as my floor general, just exactly that. I need her to direct other players on the floor. I need her to be the vocal piece in my offence, in my defence, in group huddles. I also need her to-- she's right. Encourage my teammates. She is essentially the floor general. She's making sure everything runs. And with that, she also needs to make sure that her team is emotionally where it needs to be, as well. And that's locked in all the time.

MG: Do you think, just, before I let you go, do you think that the arrival of this team in Canada is going to give players who are just starting out right now, kind of a destination point? Will they see themselves possibly playing for a Canadian team, a Toronto team, because there's a team in this country?

CHRISTINE HYDE: I would hope so. I hope a team coming here presents a vision and a goal for young athletes growing up that, they don't necessarily have to leave their country to play professionally. They don't have to go far away from home to live out their dreams. So, I'm hoping that this team coming to Canada will spark a lot of young girls.

MG: Amaya, is that a goal for you? To play here?

AMAYA ROBINSON: Yes, it is.

MG: In the meantime, do you want to give a shout out to your team now?

AMAYA ROBINSON: Yes, I want to give a shout out to all my Royal Crown coaches and my AAU coaches, Sister's Keeper. And all the coaches who coached me in the past and help me where I am today.

MG: It's good to talk to you both. This is an exciting moment for sports broadly and for women's sport, in particular. Thank you both for being here.

CHRISTINE HYDE: No problem. Thank you for having us.

AMAYA ROBINSON: Thank you for having us.

MG: Christine Hyde is the lead assistant coach for the Waterloo Warriors women's basketball team at the University of Waterloo. Amaya Robinson, 15 years old, plays for the under 15 girls basketball team for Team Ontario at the Royal Crown Academy in Scarborough. And they were talking about the arrival of the WNBA, a team in this country that is expected to start playing in that league in May of 2026.

Decoding the sperm whale's alphabet

Guests: Shane Gero

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio. My name is Matt Galloway.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds: Ticking]

MG: Kind of sounds like Morse code, doesn't it? It's actually the sound of a sperm whale communicating. And those clicks that you're hearing are part of a complex language, one that humans have been trying to decipher for decades now. Scientists are getting closer than ever before to decoding what those clicks actually mean. Last week, researchers reported a breakthrough: the discovery of a kind of sperm whale phonetic alphabet. Shane Gero is a scientist in residence at Carleton University, biology lead of Project CETI. It's a non-profit organisation that studies the communication of sperm whales. Shane, hello.

SHANE GERO: Good morning.

MG: You and I spoke before about sperm whales and your interest in them. Why are you studying sperm whales and how they communicate?

SHANE GERO: Well, they're this sort of amazing ocean enigma. You know, they live in a part of the world that even our best submarines have a hard time getting to. And yet, they have these very familiar feelings to them. You know, grandmothers are important to their society. They want to be good neighbours. They have an important cultural identity that they hold dear. So, these seem familiar to us.

MG: You've been studying them for a long time. We just heard those kind of clicking sounds. And I said that in some ways, you know, researchers are reporting a breakthrough. Tell me what that breakthrough is. What have you learned about how those clicks that we heard are a kind of a phonetic language for whales?

SHANE GERO: Well, the really exciting part about Project CETI is that it brings together biologists like myself with computer scientists, audisists and linguists, you know, who, up until a few years ago, never really thought about animal communication to answer these bigger questions. And what we've done here is really sort of expand the repertoire or the library of potential codas these animals are using as sort of building block parts, that they can combine in various different ways freely, to make many, many, many more kinds of codas than we thought before.

MG: Tell me more about that and what specifically you've learned.

SHANE GERO: Well, one of the amazing things about human language is that you have these small, meaningless parts in letters or phonemes, that you can combine in all sorts of different ways to make words, which you then can combine in lots of different ways to make great sentences and express yourself. Right? What we've done here is found the similar sort of building blocks in how you can... how whales construct codas. Right? And those codas then get exchanged in long sequences that we call exchanges or choruses. And so, structurally, there's a lot of mirroring between the human language and the communication system of sperm whales.

MG: So, are they turning those phonetic sounds into language in a way that you and I would understand in terms of the concept of language?

SHANE GERO: Before we start asking questions about meaning, about why these animals are making sounds with each other, we need to understand the structure more completely. And this greatly expands that sort of library or repertoire, which gives them the potential for expressivity. Right? The next step, of course, is to connect that with behaviour. And having worked with these whale families for the last 20 years, we're able to take steps in understanding, you know, where they are, when they are on a dive, are they socializing when they make these sounds? And of course, the really important part is the social context. You know, we know these whales. So, is it a grandmother talking to a granddaughter? Is it a sister handing off the baby when they're babysitting? Is it females from two different families communicating? And so, that gives us the behaviour and social context to then ask the really important question of why are these animals are speaking with each other.

MG: When we call it an alphabet, I mean, are there different-- you hear the clicks and the clicks to human ear to sound like clicks. How do we know that they are a range of different things within that alphabet.

SHANE GERO: Right. Disconnect that from the alphabet of letters that we're all thinking about, right. These 26 units that we combine into words. Right. And think about it more in terms of a phoneme. In terms of, these are the different building block sounds that you can randomly or not randomly, as it turns out, combine into specific, larger couplets or triplets in order to create, you know, a word or a sentence. And that's what these animals are doing. So, we found these concepts of rhythm and tempo which we had been studying in relation to sperm whale social identity at the cultural level for many, many years now. We're adding this idea of rubato and mirroring of the duration of these calls very accurately. And then this interesting one that kind of jumped off the screen when I started working with the amazing PhD student who leads the study at MIT, called ornaments. Where, in sometimes in these long exchanges, they will randomly add an extra click to a coda. And it's not that it's just a different coda with a different rhythm, it's literally just an add on to the one underneath it. Right? So, rather than being: click click click click click, it's: click click click click click click. And we've been jokingly saying that it's like the Canadians adding 'eh' to the end of everything.

MG: The 'eh' doesn't really mean anything other than I mean, maybe, perhaps a signifier that you're Canadian. What would the extra click mean, do you think?

SHANE GERO: Well, that's really fascinating, you know, because one of the things that we're studying now is when do they occur, you know. And there's some indication it happens around turn taking. So, when one animal stops and another animal starts. You know, it's really important that in this study we haven't really started making any claims about the meaning of these things. We've just greatly expanded the potential variability in their communication system. And now we need to set apart going, when do these things vary? How do they vary? Who's present when they vary? And that starts to get us towards understanding what their function is. Is it at the onset of diving? So, maybe it's related to foraging success and connect that to foraging. Is it when they only make these things when they're socialising? Then maybe it has something to do with family interactions or group decision making. You know, fundamentally they're very different from us. You know, these animals are the size of a school bus. They live in a part of the world that we find difficult to explore. And yet there's fundamental similarities between the whale experience of the world and the primate one, like us. Right. And those things surround, you know, living in a family, co-ordinating group movement, caring for our babies, you know, respecting our neighbours, these kinds of things where we overlap that'll be easier for us to interpret that connection between, you know, the sounds they're making and the behaviours that come after.

MG: I want to talk a little bit more about how you're doing this science, but let me play a little bit more of the whale sounds. We'll get you to decode some of this. Have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds: Clicking]

MG: Shane, what are we listening to there?

SHANE GERO: Okay, well, a lot of that was echolocation, but there were some one plus three codas in there. And those codas allow us to sort of distinguish at the family level. And that's, you know, a part of this larger part of the study where we've shown that social identity is really important to the whales. You know, they live in these units of grandmothers, mothers and daughters that will live together for life. And who they are and where they come from is important to them. And so, a lot of these codas appear to broadcast not only the family they come from, like that one plus three coda, but also the clan. This is all the families that share the same dialect of different coda types. So, you know, just like human is a human anywhere in the world, but the cultural diversity is really what makes the richness of the human life in different places. And that seems to be true for sperm whales, too. So, that is one place where we do have really good evidence that these animals are using these codas to mediate their social relationships.

MG: How do you go about doing this? We talked about this before, but just remind us how you listen in on these conversations that sperm whales are having.

SHANE GERO: Right. So, this study used about 15 years of audio that we'd been recording for thousands of hours off the coast of the Nature Island of Dominica in the Carribean. With Project CETI, we used computers that we deploy on the backs of whales. And they are able to record not only who's saying what, but where they are, the time of day, you know, the temperature, the different properties of the ocean. And so, that gives us a lot more context as well. But CETI is also pursuing these large-scale recording systems where we have hydrophones from the surface down to 800 metres that are recording continuously. And these much more sort of passive units called gliders, which are able to silently move through the water and are being trained now to listen for clicks and then follow the clicks and stay with the whales as long as possible.

MG: And then, once you have that, once you have those data sets, you're using artificial intelligence and the computer scientists that you mentioned to try to crunch this information?

SHANE GERO: Absolutely. So, I think, you know, machine learning or AI or neural networks, whatever term you want to give to it right now are being used in two different ways, right? One is on a very practical sense. So, for every minute of audio we use to record, it would take eight to twelve minutes to get all these calls out of the audio so that we can do our science. And now through these techniques, we're developing automatic detectors not only to say, here's a sperm whale click, but to say, these five clicks go together as a coda. And they're made by this different whale and not that different whale. And so, that's making just the process of doing the science a lot easier, let alone the higher level aspects of this. Of, when you're combining different modalities of data for studying where the whale is, versus what the whale is saying, versus the ocean environmental parameters or whether or not dolphins were around. These methods are really good at pattern finding across data sets that normal statistics or traditional approaches can't really do.

MG: So, when you get those patterns, what are you able to learn from them?

SHANE GERO: Yeah. Well, so that's the exciting part, right? At some point there's a level of interpretation that has to come. And it stems from this idea of, are we able to predict what happens next? You know, can we build models where we have three or four codas and able to predict the next ten? Ultimately, at some point, to ground truth these things, there needs to be interactive experiments. Right? A whale in the loop understanding of whether we're testing those. But that's why this process is taking a really long time, because we want to be sure that we understand the structure of the communication and when it's, where it's made. So that if we ever choose to sort of engage the animals in helping us ground truth the meaning of these things, that we're doing it correctly.

MG: What does that mean, when you say, 'a whale in the loop?' Does that mean that you go through this process, you think you are able to predict what happens next, what clicks might come next, and then you play it to a whale.

SHANE GERO: Yeah. So, things like that, that's called a playback experiment. And so, the next level of that is something like a... what we would call an interactive experiment, where we have some sort of system that is able to interpret. Rather than just playing a sound back from our library and testing if our prediction of what the whales do or say next is right, we'd have a system by which, you know, we can hear whales. They hear what the conversation is, and that produces a reply back to sort of get that engagement, right. But we're not set to do that next year or anything. Right? It's just the ultimate goal of, how do we do this in a better way than has been done before? Not that playback experiments haven't been hugely helpful in understanding the communication of animals, but sort of how do we revolutionize that process, given the sort of big data and machine learning era?

MG: Why are you so cautious with this? There must be a temptation to want to try and do this sooner rather than later, but you're very clear in saying we're nowhere near this point yet.

SHANE GERO: Two things. One is I think, you know, fundamentally this is a listening project, right? We're trying to listen to and understand who lives beside us in order to make decisions in our behaviour before we sort of force them to make any changes. Right. So, we're trying to fundamentally understand what's important to whales when they're being whales, without the humans being involved, right. But secondly, I think for me personally, you know, that sort of two-way engagement isn't what drives me. You know, I've been following the lives of these families for so long. You know, my kids know their names. And so, I feel this sort of burden of trust that these animals put into me personally, and now the CETI team, to sort of be, ironically, I suppose I would say like, to speak on their behalf until they can do it for themselves. And so, that's really important from my perspective. I can't engage in those kinds of things without having a good understanding of what we're going to do and what we can expect.

MG: And what the impact of us talking to them might be.

SHANE GERO: Certainly. I mean, for me, it's more about, you know, considering the impact of what understanding someone so fundamentally different from us might find as important, and then trying to have a conversation about what that means for us and our behaviour. That's where I think, I hope projects CETI brings us, you know. And I've seen snippets of that already in having conversations about how important cultural diversity is both to whales and to humans, and that really resonates with people. There is a place to look at someone so fundamentally different from us, a whale, and yet learn something that is fundamental about who we both are. So, for me, it's more about how we understand and learn about humans, [unclear] to someone who lives next to us, and fundamentally has been alive, and being a... sperm whales have been sperm whales for longer than humans have walked upright. So, maybe they have a lesson or two for us. Right.

MG: There's a humility that's at the centre of that.

SHANE GERO: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think, you know, I often get asked if I think the whales know who I am because I can so readily identify many of them on sight or by hearing them. But I think for me, you know, they undoubtedly know our boat, but I think the level of sort of hubris to assume they know or care who I am is not in me. So, I think you're right. That's probably coded into all these decisions.

MG: You do a lot of work in Dominica, in the Caribbean. And they've created this reserve to protect sperm whales. Just finally, how important is that for the work that you do?

SHANE GERO: Yeah. I mean, the government has made some excellent policy decisions in the last year, and they should definitely be applauded. You know, it's this huge space, it's larger than the island itself, that's going to be a protected space from shipping and limiting fishing interactions with the whales and regulating the whale watch industry, which is so productive and enjoyed, allows people to enjoy the whales in a safe way. For me, it feels like I've delivered just a small part on that burden of trust that these animals have put into me. Working with the government over the last year, being a science advisor through that process, has been so very rewarding. You know, because I always said that, you know, many of these large primate studies have been going for 50 years, that that would always be the goal of the research in Dominica. And, we're coming up on year 20, and there needed to be some intervention in terms of how humans are interacting with whales coastally. You know, these are some of the most urban ocean nomads, right? And so, having some lessons learned from how we interact in their ocean home and changing our behaviour kind of echoes everything we've been saying today.

MG: Your work is fascinating. I'm really glad to talk to you about it again, and I hope we have the chance to talk. There'll be another breakthrough and it will blow our minds again. I hope we have the chance to talk again. In the meantime, Shane, thank you very much.

SHANE GERO: Thank you. I look forward to talking to you the next time around.

MG: Shane Gero is a scientist in residence at Carleton University and the biology lead of Project CETI. It's a non-profit organisation that studies the communication of sperm whales. Mind blowing indeed. That is The Current for this Tuesday. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll see you tomorrow.

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Tuesday May 14, 2024 Full Transcript

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