Ethan Abramson

I'm a video game and VR developer/artist/designer with decades of experience in a wide range of projects and technologies. For the past couple of years my work has increasingly focused on AI-related features for an online VR platform. such as implementing GPT-4 based NPCs, Stable Diffusion for interactive in-game art created by players, and most recently, in-engine machine learning agents. I've also had a lifelong fascination with cetaceans going back to some of my earliest memories at the Museum of Natural History, whale watching off Cape Cod, and countless hours of listening to Roger Payne's groundbreaking Songs of the Humpback Whale as a kid. This was in part due to my father being a record producer for Judy Collins and having used Payne's whale recordings in her hit "Farewell to Tarwathie". So my connection to whales and their calls is pretty deeply ingrained. Presently, the growing confluence between AI/ML and interspecies communication is a source of exhilaration for me. I believe if these endeavors are successful, it will likely have humbling, far reaching effects for human civilization. Notably, we must inevitably recognize that there are many diverse possible forms of sentience, our own being but one anthropocentric example.

September 2023