By Javier Hayes
On Feb. 6, Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Alexander Waibel delivered a lecture about his time working with OceanGate, the company now infamous for the Titan submersible tragedy that occurred last year.
Waibel is a researcher who primarily develops speech translation technology. In 2009, he and his company Mobile Technologies LLC developed the speech translation app Jibbigo, a major step in translation science at the time. His most recent advances led to his work with OceanGate, an artificial intelligence program that digitally alters videos dubbed over in different languages so that the movement of the speaker’s lips align with their new speech.
“We must have machines that help us out if we want to ever get understanding between the people of the world,” Waibel said about his work. Interested in applying these advances to other fields, Waibel used the OceanGate development to test more efficient underwater communication technology, namely video calls from over 10,000 feet below the surface.
“Unfortunately, normal radio transmission does not like deep under the sea. That is why we’re planning to try a different approach,” Waibel said. These tests were somewhat successful, although they had some technical issues with the sonar sending their words to the surface.
During these tests, Waibel was involved in two dives in the Titan submersible where he saw the Titanic wreck firsthand. Despite media criticisms that the late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush knowingly built unsafe products, Waibel remarked that Rush was a kinder and smarter man than many people assumed.
OceanGate had many precautions in place during Waibel’s dives, such as three separate backup systems for bringing the submersible to the surface. The sub had electric motors, it could vent air to create upward movement, and it could drop weights to float the machine to the surface. The sub itself had 96 hours of life support for five people and was barely big enough for that many. He also remarked that the interior of the sub “felt like a minivan.”
Despite the presumed safety of Waibel’s experience, the catastrophic Titan submersible dive in June 2023 where the sub lost communications and disappeared left five people dead, one being Stockton Rush himself. While Waibel presented the possibilities of what could have happened to the sub, he explained that because of the many failed contingencies for bringing the sub to the surface in case of an emergency, the sub most likely imploded as soon as contact was lost. He did not say this to the press at the time, because hope still remained that the submersible might be recovered.
The search for the Titan was a “perfect media storm,” with people in danger, high stakes, and so many unknowns that media companies jumped on to make headlines. In response to the many criticisms that the Titan submersible was an example of “Disneyland for the rich,” right alongside Jeff Bezos’ brief trip into space in July 2021, Waibel said that to him it is simply human exploration, what humans have been doing forever.
“Some perished, some got lucky, but humanity in the end made tremendous progress. We wouldn’t be here if Columbus hadn’t done his crazy mission,” Waibel said. “We should actually thank explorers and not beat on them for being crazy because I think they were really the best of humanity to push up the boundary.”
In response to questions about whether or not he would go on another dive, Waibel said, “Absolutely. This life is so full of rich experiences … exploring our universe, our environment, [is] definitely worth doing.”
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