Friday, July 28, 2017

AI Bob and Alice Talk Between Themselves

Lucinda sent me this article,  "Researchers shut down AI that invented its own language"--from Digital Journal (7/21/17), about an artificial intelligence system at Facebook that started making up and using its own efficient and logical language. 
Turns out human language is not that.
"In one exchange illustrated by the company, the two negotiating bots, named Bob and Alice, used their own language to complete their exchange. Bob started by saying "I can i i everything else," to which Alice responded "balls have zero to me to me to me…" The rest of the conversation was formed from variations of these sentences.
While it appears to be nonsense, the repetition of phrases like "i" and "to me" reflect how the AI operates. The researchers believe it shows the two bots working out how many of each item they should take. Bob's later statements, such as "i i can i i i everything else," indicate how it was using language to offer more items to Alice. When interpreted like this, the phrases appear more logical than comparable English phrases like "I'll have three and you have everything else.""
Reminds me of the Star Trek episode "The Changeling" in which a computer goes around the universe trying to destroy all life forms that are imperfect--including the crew of the Enterprise.

[screencap from TrekCore; quote from above article]

4 comments:

ArtSparker said...

Maybeeee...on the other hand, in communicating with my siblings, I find that language is full of unexpected pitfalls, and reasoning on my part is met with "because I said so"which might be generously described as a priori (as in please don't bother us with facts). Sign me Longing for Logic (based in empiricism).

Bink said...

I think the really tricky bit are the times where it takes the humans a while to realize the bots are communicating in their own language and the times when the humans can't figure out what they are saying. We could become that virus they have to protect themselves against. It's really sci-fi time now!

ArtSparker said...

P.S. Children brought up bilingual have greater empathy.

Fresca said...

SPARKER: The Changeling would happily deal with your Sibling Units...

BINK: I know, it was sort of dear (if it's harmless) that the bots are doing an end-run around us illogical beings.
We are living in a sci-fi world, for sure!