CBER External Seminar - Dr Tom Denton, Google DeepMind

This seminar is being hosted by the People and Nature Lab (UCL East)

Abstract: Acoustics offer a unique window into ecosystems: many key indicator species are vocal, and it is easier and cheaper than ever to accumulate thousands of hours of field recordings. Analysis of these recordings has remained a challenge, however. In this talk, we will present work on using bird embeddings to search for and classify novel signals from diverse taxa. We focus on improving workflow efficiency, allowing fast active learning loops which do not depend on machine learning experts. This allows fast development of new classifiers, often in the space of an afternoon, allowing ecologists and conservationists to focus on the actual ecology and conservation questions.