Revealed: Facebook did shut down its AI programme but not because its bots went rogue

Earlier this week, the internet was abuzz with media reports about Facebook shutting down one of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs after it allegedly invented its own language.

However, some experts have gone public offering a counter-view pointing out how the media wrongly interpreted the development, and blew it way out of proportion.

For those who are unaware of the developments, reports went viral about an AI research program by Facebook involving two bots taking an unexpected turn. The bots named Bob and Alice were in a conversation negotiating with each other when something weird unfurled.

The conversation went like this:

Bob began by saying: "I can i i everything else."

To which Alice responded: "balls have zero to me to me to me…"

Bob went on to say:”i i can i i i everything else."

Experts initially couldn’t figure out what this gibberish meant. However, later they stumbled upon the idea that maybe the bots were communicating in a language which they invented altogether.

It took them a while to figure out that the sentence said by Bob,”i i can i i i everything else," actually meant ‘I'll have three and you have everything else’. Subsequent to this development, Facebook shut down the whole program.

The subject assumed even more importance as just a week ago Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg was criticised by Elon Musk, Founder of Tesla, who said that Zuckerberg’s “understanding of the subject (of artificial intelligence) is limited.”

To this effect, the internet just assumed Facebook had shut the program down after understanding the perils of AI as Elon Musk had mentioned.

However, another group of experts recently rubbished reports that said how the program was shut down because the company realised the consequences of continuing with the program.

The experts argued that the bots in question never invented a new language but the neural networks simply modified the human language after realising that by doing so the interaction would become more efficient.

A report from Gizmodo said, "In their attempts to learn from each other, the bots thus began chatting back and forth in a derived shorthand - but while it might look creepy, that's all it was."

The report goes on to say that it was, in fact, an error at the programmers’ end, who failed to incentivise the bots to communicate, according to human-comprehensible rules of English language. Subsequently, in their attempt to learn from each other, the bots figured out a more efficient way to communicate by deriving a shorthand. Though it did sound weird and looked creepy, that was all.

Facebook did indeed shut down the program. However, it was not because the bots went rogue and they panicked, but because Facebook was disinterested in the outcome of the research.

It turns out it was just human paranoia about machines out-learning, out-smarting us, and eventually leading to a world dominated by machines and the end of all mankind which made us go bonkers, when all the chatbots did was come up with an efficient way to trade each other’s ‘balls’.

Although the future is uncertain, one can be sure that there is no imminent risk being posed by AI to human beings. At best, all the harm Bob and Alice can inflict on humanity today is by taking away a few jobs from the market.