Some time ago, Facebook became a major headline in major portals in the world when Facebook decided to stop its artificial intelligence (AI) program because it was detected to have made its own language.
Speculation also arose. Some major media have even begun to link this phenomenon with the beginnings of how artificial intelligence can destroy humanity as it is often the creative meal of people in Hollywood there.
“‘Robot intelligence is very dangerous,’” warned an expert after Facebook’s AI developed its own language, “as reported by The Mirror.
The same news angle was raised by The Sun, The Independent, The Telegraph and in several other online portals. However, what actually happened? Why did Facebook stop the program? And should we all panic and begin to worry that what has happened in the films will come true?
The answer, most likely not. Although some well-known thinkers – including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Steve Wozniak – say that AI could one day threaten human life, but this Facebook AI phenomenon is not something to worry about.
Starting from the Chatbot Program
Chatbot technology now has indeed become a hot topic in the world of technology. Facebook did not want to miss this trend by starting to develop their own chatbot.
The first experiment was carried out by creating two chatbots designed to be able to communicate in commercial conversation. For example to negotiate, exchange hats, balls, and books, and determine the price of the goods.
This experiment was carried out in an effort to understand how linguistics played a role in the way they discussed during the negotiation process and most importantly how their ability to dominate the conversation.
However, in its development these two chatbots created their own changes to the language used making it easier for them to work. Unfortunately this language change was only understood by the chatbot, and left something mysterious to the researchers who developed them.
Not a New Phenomenon
AI’s language change is not a new phenomenon in the world of technology. This language modification is done solely for more efficient interactions.
The technology website Gizmodo says, “Although it looks scary, this is done in an effort to learn from each other, the bot starts to talk back and forth in the derived stenography.”
The same case was experienced by Google when developing their translator software. “The network has encoded semantic elements at the sentence level,” Google explained in a blog.
Another example is when Wired reported a researcher at OpenAI who was working on a system that had AI that created their own language and improved their ability to process information quickly and could deal with difficult problems more effectively.
Facebook itself has closed this chatbot program and said that this step was done not on the basis of panic. The program closure was done because their initial goal was to create a bot that could talk to humans, as researcher Mike Mike told FastCo.
Future technological developments are indeed still in big question marks. All innovations can still be realized, but still with the aim to help and support humanity in carrying out their daily activities.
