
My boss recently said that sometimes he doesn’t understand what his kids are saying.
One is fond of football, the other likes memes. When they talk among themselves they use the words and meanings of their peers. In other words, subcultural slang; they give little thought to the effects on our language.
I get it; even more so after reading about Facebook’s AI creating its own unique language.
I often wonder how the globalization and interference of non-human creators will affect the future of language — will we still be able to understand each other in 100 years?
In the Facebook case, while experimenting with language learning, a research algorithm created its own language that humans could not understand to communicate more efficiently between chatbots.
It was functional in that it continued to carry information, but uncontrollable, because researchers had no idea what was being “said.”
The result was intriguing because it showed the algorithm’s capacity for generating its own encoding scheme, but also showed what can happen with unconstrained feedback in an automated social language product.
I think the idea that someday software could be “alive” and “conscious” is an intriguing possibility, but I wonder if humans have the skill and forethought to deal with it.
What do you think?