Facebook’s AI Experiment Failed Because It Was Stupid

A few years ago, Facebook ran an artificial intelligence experiment, “Researchers who had been training bots to negotiate with one another realized that the bots, left to their own devices, started communicating in a non-human language.”

The gibberish produced was supposedly a secret language even cryptographers couldn’t make sense of. But if we look at the actual conversation, it becomes clear what was going on in the ‘minds’ of the AI bots.

First, let’s look at the original convo, and then below I’ll give the translation into human:

Original Conversation

1 Bob: i can i i everything else … … … … . .
2 Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
3 Bob: you i everything else … … … … . .
4 Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me
5 Bob: i i can i i i everything else … … … … . .
6 Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me
7 Bob: i … … … … … … .
8 Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
9 Bob: you i i i i i everything else … … … … . .
10 Alice: balls have 0 to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
11 Bob: you i i i everything else … … … … . .
12 Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

Human Translation

What I noticed is that Alice uses “to me” where Bob uses periods (.). In the first line, Bob uses 6 words followed by 14 periods (20 items total). In the second line, Alice uses 20 words. For each pair of two lines, I’ve counted the total items:

1&2: 20–20
3&4: 18–18
5&6: 22–18
7&8: 20–20
9&10: 22–20
11&12: 20–20

Bob and Alice were using “gibberish” to negotiate numerically. Alice never bid over 20, though Bob overbid Alice twice (when bidding 22). In other words, Alice was willing to match Bob’s demands up to 20, but not over 20. (Bob was asking for too much and Alice knew it.)

In all, it points to poor programming of the AI. The bots weren’t using language to negotiate. They weren’t thinking with language. They were using a numerical bidding strategy transcribed into gibberish.

This is what happens when computer programmers think language can be ‘calculated’. It cannot.