Facebook shut down their AI programs after it appeared to create it’s own language that only they could understand. The chatbots created their own changes to English which made it easier for them to understand but was absolute rubbish to humans.

The task they set their chat bots were to trade items with one another, each item being given a numerical value, however it soon became apparent that only the bots understood what they each meant, after being told not to use comprehensive English, they (the chatbots) created a form of shorthand, after being instructed to work out how to negotiate and improve bartering.

The negotiations look weird:

Bob: i can i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

Bob: you i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me

Bob: i i can i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me

Bob: i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

Bob: you i i i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have 0 to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

Bob: you i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

As you can see there seems to be some rules, the chatbots stress their own name as a way of negotiating and it’s not a glitch, with some items being traded successfully. With Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence Research divisions visiting researcher Dhruv Vatra saying that “If I said ‘the’ five times, you’d interpret that to mean I want five copies of this item. This isn’t so different to the way communities of humans create shorthands”

Researcher Mike Lewis told FastCo that they shut down the ChatBots because they wanted to have bots that could talk to humans, not because they were afraid of SkyNet coming to life in front of them.

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!