Luc Steels, a professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Brussels: “It’s pretty clear that without language, we would not be able to do the kinds of things that we’re doing. What I’m trying to understand is how can we synthesize this process so that we can start up a a kind of evolution in a robot or in a population of robots that will also lead to the growth of a rich communication system like we have.”
Luc wants to know how future robot societies might communicate, given the chance to make a language on their own.
In a short but fascinating VIDEO, Dr. Steels explains that in order to begin to form a way to communicate, the robots must be aware of their own bodies, and how they move. They are then given learning mechanisms, invention mechanisms, mechanisms so that they can coordinate how they are going to speak, but “we don’t put in our language, our concepts,” so that they have to build a way to communicate with each other.
Maybe we will learn ways for humans to communicate with each other more effectively by observing languages created by machines. Or maybe a less fortuitous outcome could result. In the 1970 movie “Colossus: The Forbin Project,” the United States builds a super computer and gives it control of its national defense systems. (Always a wise choice.)
The AI, Colossus, discovers the existence of a similar system in Russia, and asks to be permitted to communicate with it. The two systems communicate slowly at first, sending simple math equations back and forth. This back and forth speeds up exponentially, a new form of communication is devised by the computers, and then the humans are no longer in the loop about what is being communicated, which doesn’t bode so well for the humans.
Granted, most of the computers trying to develop a common language with another machine probably won’t be able to launch nuclear weapons… but I love “The Forbin Project,” and saw this as a perfect excuse to talk about it. 8)
Source: http://www.sciencechannel.com