Facebook shuts down experiment after chatbots develop their own language

03Aug, 2017

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any crazier, this happens. Apparently, Facebook was conducting an experiment involving artificial intelligence robots before said robots began talking to themselves in a barely recognisable language. Facebook had hoped to make a breakthrough by pushing the chatbots to negotiate and sell products with a certain value like hats, baseball bats e.t.c to themselves. Here now comes the weird part, the robots then began this interaction by negotiating in language that wasn’t understandable to anyone other than themselves. The handlers of the program were also perturbed by this development. However, it seems that the robots were able to complete the transactions between each other because they understood each other perfectly. A typical conversation between the chatbots went thus;

B: i can i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
B: you i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me
B: i i can i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me
B: i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
B: you i i i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A: balls have 0 to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
B: you i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

Some have said it is probably due to bad programming, one expert says “If you create a program to interact with another and the thing starts acting that way, I would probably surmise it as an error with the natural language processing”. On the other hand, others have concluded that this shows the terrifying future where A.I would eventually supersede humanity.


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