Two robots – created by Facebook – have been shut down after developing their own language.
It happened while the social media firm was experimenting with teaching the ‘chatbots’ how to negotiate with one another.
During tests, they discovered the bots – known as Alice and Bob -managed to develop their own machine language spontaneously.
Boffins had given the machines lessons in human speech using algorithms then left them alone to develop conversational skills.
But when the scientists returned, they found that the AI software had begun to deviate from normal speech and were using a brand new language created without any input from their human supervisors.
The new language was more efficient for communication between the bots, but was not helpful in achieving the task they had been set.
The programmers then had to alter the way the machines learned language to complete their negotiation training.
Although what they said was nonsense, boffins noticed some rules to the speech especially by the way the chatbots kept stressing their own name.
They believe it meant what was said was not simply a glitch in the way the messages were read out.
UK Robotics Professor Kevin Warwick said: “This is an incredibly important milestone, but anyone who thinks this is not dangerous has got their head in the sand.
“This is the first recorded communication but there will have been many more unrecorded.
“Smart devices right now have the ability to communicate and although we think we can monitor them, we have no way of knowing.”
Source : mirror
Collected by RG