Facebook’s AI bots created their own shorthand after being taught to negotiate

Researchers at Facebook’s artificial intelligence arm stumbled upon an interesting problem earlier this year when their artificial intelligence agents appeared to be speaking their own language.

Glenn Beck talked about the futuristic story on Friday’s “The Glenn Beck Radio Program.”

This particular AI project, which has since been shuttered, involved training AI chatbots to negotiate financial transactions. The goal was for chatbots to be indistinguishable from humans while negotiating business deals. However, researchers noticed after a while that the bots were making up their own ungrammatical shorthand during their transactions.

Researchers observed bot conversations like this one:

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

Besides taking liberties with English to communicate with each other more effectively, the bots were also able to use human tactics to get a better deal.

“There were cases where agents initially feigned interest in a valueless item, only to later ‘compromise’ by conceding it — an effective negotiating tactic that people use regularly,” Facebook researchers said in a blog post. “This behavior was not programmed by the researchers but was discovered by the bot as a method for trying to achieve its goals (emphasis added).”

To see more from Glenn, visit his channel on TheBlaze and listen live to “The Glenn Beck Radio Program” with Glenn Beck, Pat Gray, Stu Burguiere and Jeffy Fisher weekdays 9 a.m.–noon ET on TheBlaze Radio Network.