August 21, 2026 — Stark against the white Antarctic terrain, a small, yellow robot moves roughly one centimeter per second. Too fast, and it might spoil its mission: to gather data on a colony of emperor penguins that call the Southern Ocean home.
Artificial intelligence recognition tools help the robot, called ECHO, spot when the penguins start to get spooked. A green box over the penguin signals that it’s calm, but a red box signals stress.
To keep the boxes green, ECHO must approach very slowly, said Daniel Zitterbart, associate scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the project lead on ECHO.
“The good thing is a robot doesn’t get bored,” he said.
AI tools are quietly transforming how ocean scientists gather and analyze information from the watery deep. Researchers from WHOI, the University of Rhode Island, and the UMass Dartmouth School of Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) have either employed AI tools for decades or are looking to incorporate the technology into future projects, exponentially increasing the volume of data they’re able to collect.
These new applications, often going hand in hand with work seeking to better understand climate change, come as the technology faces backlash from environmental advocates concerned about the amount of water and electricity necessary to sustain it.
In some ways, researchers say the technology is a boon in an era when scientists need to do more with less federal funding. But these researchers are also quick to point out that AI tools will never replace human scientists — and the public money that funds them.
“There is no AI that can help me go out in the field and catch a penguin,” Zitterbart said. “To learn about the natural world, you still need to go into the natural world.”