Some wonderful things are in development because of advances made in artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. At the same time, there is perhaps an uncomfortable fear that machines may rise up and turn against humans.
Usually the scenario is brought up in a joking matter, but it was no laughing manner to researchers at Facebook who shut down an AI they invented after it taught itself a new language.
FACEBOOK HAS just been served up a dish made of AI humble pie, after it was forced to turn off a machine learning device that started to bypass its masters.
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."
The AI apparently realised that the rich expression of English phrases wasn’t required for the scenario. Modern AIs operate on a "reward" principle where they expect following a sudden course of action to give them a "benefit." In this instance, there was no reward for continuing to use English, so they built a more efficient solution instead.
"Agents will drift off from understandable language and invent code-words for themselves," Fast Co. Design reports Facebook AI researcher Dhruv Batra said. "Like if I say 'the' five times, you interpret that to mean I want five copies of this item. This isn't so different from the way communities of humans create shorthands."
It's scary because it means that the AI is making decisions that pull us out of the loop and it's exactly the sort of thing that Mark Zuckerberg has been saying won't be a problem.
Facebook's researchers realised they were losing control of the situation and decided to turn Bob and Alice off.