Gruber is a marine biologist, a professor, and the founder of Project CETI, the Cetacean Translation Initiative, a project using artificial intelligence and machine learning to decode the communication of sperm whales. To some, it’s the most audacious scientific undertaking of our time. To others, a beautiful fool’s errand. Gruber sees it as the next logical step.

He started, as many scientists do, as a kid who couldn’t stop staring. Growing up in New Jersey, Gruber was the boy crouched in the grass, watching ants, not with the detached curiosity of a future entomologist, but with something closer to kinship. He was a sensitive, awkward child who connected more easily with the small creatures in his backyard than with other kids. That quality never left him. It became his method.

His academic path wound through microbiology, biological oceanography, bacteria-protozoa interactions, fish, sharks, sea turtles, and visual communication before arriving,…