From The Ringer
David Attenborough and the Voice That Revealed a Planet
By Danny Chau
Four decades ago, Sir David Attenborough traveled to Nigeria to examine a complex insect society built by more than a million constituents with no more than five brain cells apiece. It was a termite mound, standing 15 feet tall, with imposing concrete-like spires built entirely of clay and saliva. Local Nigerian workers were clearing the area for farmland, which meant that this termite manor would have to be demolished. But not before Attenborough and a documentary film crew burrowed more than 6 feet beneath the surface to capture one of nature’s most extraordinary feats of architectural engineering for the 1990 series The Trials of Life.
A termite colony is multitiered and manifold. There is the queen and her round-the-clock nursery workers. There are gardeners. There are laborers. There are soldiers. This termite species is called Macrotermes bellicosus. Macrotermes means “big termite.” Bellicosus means “warlike.” The soldiers are distinct, with an engorged head and hedge-trimmer pincers comically larger than their abdomen—imagine a stone crab claw affixed to a foam earplug. “These really aggressive soldier termites will attack anything that comes into the mound,” Mike Gunton, the creative director and executive producer of the BBC’s Natural History Unit, told me. “Including David Attenborough.”
The activity among the hundreds upon thousands of termites generates a considerable amount of heat within the fortress. Enough to kill off the entire colony if there weren’t a means of reprieve. Luckily, there is. The film crew bored two holes 6 feet deep: one for the camera, and one for Attenborough to wriggle his way in through. The camera revealed a remarkable underground air-conditioning system, one of the most impressive structures that Sir David had ever seen. The entire colony rested on a plinth of clay, and on the underbelly of that structure were rows of razor-thin slats of mud that absorbed the heat and moisture and cooled the entire colony in the evaporation process...
Sarah Barrington, an AI researcher at UC Berkeley, has spent the past few years focused on deepfake detection and digital forensics, with the hopes of effecting policy and regulatory changes that would create safeguards for every person’s likeness, in all its representations. “I think the case of David Attenborough’s voice is so interesting because it’s not just about identity, not just about taking his identity, but that voice has weight,” she told me. “That voice means something in society. Hearing that voice with certain types of content literally changes the meaning of that content...”
Sarah is an an engineer, AI researcher, and Ph.D. candidate at the UC Berkeley School of Information.
