Can robots be made creative enough to invent their own language?
January 30, 2013
Professor Luc Steels describes his recent breakthrough experiments, in which robots are programmed to play language games and come up with novel concepts, words and meanings. He explains how this triggers a process of cultural evolution that leads to more complex forms of language and what this tells us about the nature of our own intelligence and the future of artificial intelligence.
Luc Steels is ICREA Research Professor at the Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (CSIC-UPF) in Barcelona and Director of the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris. The Simonyi Lecture is funded by a generous gift from the Amalur Foundation.
— University of Oxford
Video Source: University of Oxford
Related:
Oxford Robotics Research Group
Comments (8)
by GatorALLin
…just a few comments that I thought of when watching this full 1.22 hour talk.
#1 I understand this lecture was not a http://www.ted.com talk, but after watching this long video, I more appreciate the shorter format of the 20min. or less ted talks. I would love to see what he could do to condense his talk to fit within a ted.com format.
#2 His comment that he did not know the difference from iPad or iPhone…that he does not know new technology very well…yet ironically we should trust him to teach robots how to learn to speak etc… thought this was a sad but telling comment. Clearly this speaker is very intelligent…
#3 I liked his comment in the question period of the talk about how the Right brothers invented the first flying machine and that they looked at birds, but no use of feathers to fly…. they needed wings, but they did not flap for example. How to condense a complicated thing like flying from birds to flying with machines. It reminded me of a quote from Henry Ford that he invented the Model-T car, but if he had listed to people he would have been trying to just invent a faster horse. (maybe Henry Ford should get more credit for inventing a great assembly line as well).
#3 I found it odd there was not any real discussion about how humans create new languages (note we don’t tend to all speak the same language, but we create new words/slang and thus by default the world has thousand of languages, all surprisingly different). Just in Africa alone there are up to 3,000 different languages, maybe 2,100 still spoken. This to me tells me that by human instinct we are more likely to create different words that all have the same basic meaning, so language is critical, but ironically as a system for all of us to use it is not well designed to share communication when this happens. I understand the need for 1 tribe to keep secret their communication, but that does not really explain well 2,100 different languages…. I think it points more that we automatically create new languages very fast/easily and by default we don’t think of matching words that another would use. Maybe English is turning out to be the language of business or making money… so maybe in 50-100 years the earth will eventually have 1 -2 spoken languages that anyone can use to communicate with (special thanks to world wide travel, the internet and TV being a huge impact on other cultures and much of it done in USA).
…all of this speaker’s talk about creation of language started with the child level.
….Maybe our language is just way too complex for robots of this time and lower computer power….thus they need a simplified version.
#4 I understand that this talk was also about creativity and can robots be creative… I liked the speaker then asking…what is the definition of creativity then…? I can see that robots would solve a problem from a different angle that we might and thus this could appear creative, when maybe it was better to say it was unexpected or different. It comes down to algorithms and new combinations or boiled down simplicity that then is recombined in new ways that appears creative from a human standpoint, but would be hard to give a robot credit yet for being truly creative as we understand the term to fully mean IMHO. My guess is that it is hard to fully appreciate how many sensors a human brain has to analyse an object with size, colors, ratio, smells, textures, etc… and these robots may have only a small fraction of those to come up with ways to understand or see objects. This talk made me appreciate how amazing nature is vs. us trying to come up with a robot that will simulate even a small part of what the human brain does so well.
by WLGJR
In the future language will no longer be that important, as (like RKurzweil predicted) high-bandwidth multisensory communication (or even technotelepathy allowing directly communicating articulately fine details of abstract things like emotion) will make linguistic communication less common.
Even if there is any language, it will certainly be much richer in vocabulary (including culture specific words from different languages and alot of technical terms). This should enable revolutions in logic and STEM (e.g. a new system of logic that is different from the modern known system in similar way that the Einsteinian new physics is different from the Newtonian classical physics).
by Mr.X
@ Gator: An introductory text on linguistics would answer many of your questions, and correct some of your misunderstandings.
American influence via movies (etc) is almost always constricted to “low-brow” stuff; and that’s being dubbed anyway.
“Maybe English is turning out to be the language of business or making money”
It already is, to a great extent… the decline of the USA in relative influence may reverse this trend though.
“so maybe in 50-100 years the earth will eventually have 1 -2 spoken languages that anyone can use to communicate with”
Just because I sell some things to some people using English doesn’t mean I’d want to speak to my family in English.
How would you feel if you had to speak another language or two and give up on your own?Would you do it?No?Neither would “we”.
“(special thanks to world wide travel, the internet and TV being a huge impact on other cultures and much of it done in USA).”
The influence of your media is -afaik- largely exaggerated; or you are talking about third world countries.Do you think French people watch American shows in English, if they watch them at all?
Most of what you produce wouldn’t be watched elsewhere…
The spread of English was and is largely due to the British empire.
Who would learn English just to watch some American tv-shows ( BBC makes better documentaries than most American channels, btw)!?
If the country is so poor that the people can not afford some dubbing, and it doesn’t produce it’s own shows, it is highly probable that most people don’t have the time and money to sit around and watch TV.
Nations whose population is small and that are dependent on trade are exempted from this (Netherlands for example)
Btw: Just in case you don’t want to learn about computing-
“.Maybe our language is just way too complex for robots of this time and lower computer power….thus they need a simplified version.”
This is due to linguistic ambiguity.Even humans can and do get something wrong because of this ambiguity.Human language isn’t all that logical.
by GatorALLin
With work I get to travel to 25+ different foreign countries over the last 10 years…and many of them I get at least 2 visits each… I am always amazed at how many US tv shows and movies I see on their local TV. Not in English of course, but dubbed over (not subtitles). Most of them are laugh track type of things… Baywatch or Seinfeld or MTVcribs or a dozen other very American shows…. I can’t help but wonder how all of our jokes translate and how our culture must be an infecting like virus that spreads (directly or indirectly). Of course there are foreign films made, but still seems that the world is watching what is made in Hollywood by a HUGE margin… and will be for many years to come. Really good TV is not that easy to make…and when it is so easy to dub over the sound track to run a show that you know already is great….why try and create another one that might work…. just saying… I think this reach goes way beyond what you might think at first glance.
…regarding English as the language of Money… I don’t think people stop talking their native language or would want to learn ONLY Englis, but if you are going to send your child to school, what is the 2nd language they now learn if English is not the first…? I would argue there are more people in China that learn English than are in the USA total. (maybe they don’t pronounce it as well, but I bet they can read and write it with better grammar than most of our middle school kids in the USA).
I use an app on my phone that was free that lets me talk or type in and get translation back instantly. I don’t this is a replacement for actually learning a local language, but the 100 simple phrases you need to navigate a new foreign city make it painless or reduces stress to explore and do things you would want a tour guide for normally. It is amazing what technology already has given us regarding language and travel and made it a flat small world again.
by WLGJR
These Brits (and other Europeans) like to sound sophisticated and cultured, but the real advancements are made in the USA by the DARPA (I am a fan of neither, but seriously I am desparate to see a European equivalent of DARPA. I cannot stand to see such well cultured people being perfect pacifists, the type that resort to non-resistance in war times).
by Ralph Dratman
You are talking perfect nonsense.
by Mr.X
“These Brits (and other Europeans) like to sound sophisticated and cultured, ”
Google fractual wrongness (if you don’t know this term).You say sound.So, you have conversed in English with a whole variety of continental European people as well as with Brits (which would still be unrepresentative)?
Who, of course, all spoke english perfectly and tried to intimidate you with their “better-than-perfect accents” and their gargantuan vocabularies!?
At the gym : “Would you please have a look at those abdominals; Sir!?Splendid!Adamant I might say…oh well…let’s not disgress from the topic of the physical and spiritual inferiority of your people… and the sets of bizeps curls ahead… ”
” but the real advancements are made in the USA by the DARPA”
So the rest of us makes the unreal advancements?Btw: What did you contribute?Are you being tribal?
http://io9.com/5878503/watch-neil-degrasse-tyson-lay-bare-the-decline-of-american-science-in-180-seconds
” I cannot stand to see such well cultured people being perfect pacifists, the type that resort to non-resistance in war times”
Non-resistance?Do you call invading the middle East “resistance”?
If you can’t stand it, you can protect us.Thanks.
Watch more faux news.Who would attack us Europeans!? At least we have not that many shootings in schools; your society is (before the historical allusions start) much more violent.
Btw: Do you really think we would not protect our homes and families in case of invasion!?
Thanks for warning us… these high-tech middle Easterners though… with their WPM’s etc, you know what I mean…
Wasn’t it you who thought India and China have a lead in military technology over us Europeans^^
Have a nice day;)
by GatorALLin
NY may have a trick up their sleeve… “Watson has a unique ability to understand the subtle nuances of human language, sift through vast amounts of data, and provide evidence-based answers to its human users’ questions.”
http://www.kurzweilai.net/ibm-ships-watson-system-to-rpi-researchers-to-develop-new-markets