{"id":92978,"date":"2017-08-17T12:47:39","date_gmt":"2017-08-17T12:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/en\/?p=92978"},"modified":"2025-07-01T23:49:06","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T06:49:06","slug":"truth-behind-ai-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/truth-behind-ai-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"The baffling truth behind the AI Facebook shut down \u201cout of fear it was conspiring against humanity\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m sure you\u2019re aware of the mess that went down recently with a \u201cdangerous\u201d Facebook experiment. I\u2019m talking about the news that <\/span>Facebook has shut down an Artificial Intelligence bot <\/b>in development because it was starting to be too dangerous for humanity.<\/span><\/p>\n

In recent days, we\u2019ve seen disturbing\u00a0headlines like \u201cFacebook engineers panic, pull plug on AI after bots develop their own language\u201d; \u201cFacebook shuts down AI after it <\/span>invents its own creepy language\u2019\u201d<\/b>; or articles about \u201cthe danger that comes with artificial intelligence.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For crying out loud, just look at <\/span>some of the images<\/b> alongside these news articles:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"141110_robot-664x374\" \"t2-judgement-day\" \"0F0-1024x564\"<\/p>\n

Has Facebook accidentally created a series of bots that talk to each other in a language they invented and conspire against us? <\/span>No,<\/b> it<\/span> was just something that got out of hand, thanks to the media.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, what happened? <\/span>What\u2019s the truth behind the hysteria and controversy? <\/b>It all started a few weeks ago, when <\/span>FastCo Design<\/span><\/a>, a tech and marketing site, revealed that two bots created by Facebook were talking to each other in a strange way. <\/span><\/p>\n

These two bots, <\/span>\u201cBob\u201d and \u201cAlice,\u201d<\/b> are part of a project that the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research unit (or FAIR) <\/span>publicly announced\u00a0this June<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The aim of the project was to find out if it\u2019s <\/span>\u201cpossible for dialog agents with differing goals to engage in start-to-finish negotiations with other bots or people while arriving at common decisions or outcomes.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

These bots tried to <\/span>divvy up a series of objects <\/b>(represented by virtual objects such as books, hats and balls) so that both were in agreement. <\/span><\/p>\n

Here you\u2019ve got the bots <\/span>negotiating among themselves:<\/b><\/p>\n

\"Captura-1024x326\"<\/p>\n

The idea behind this project was to find out if a bot could learn enough human interaction to negotiate with a user <\/span>without this user knowing that he\/she was talking to a machine. <\/b>On a practical level, a bot of this calibre could help companies care to client needs 24\/7, without having to hire \u201chumans\u201d for this.<\/span><\/p>\n

The project was a success: \u201cThe performance of FAIR\u2019s best negotiation agent, which makes use of reinforcement learning and dialog roll-outs, matched that of human negotiators… demonstrating that FAIR\u2019s bots not only can speak English but <\/span>also think intelligently about what to say.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

So far so good, right? There\u2019s nothing ominous or strange about it. It got complicated when <\/span>FAIR decided to take their most intelligent bots,<\/b> called \u201cBob\u201d and \u201cAlice,\u201d and have them talk to each other. Out of curiosity. <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s then that these<\/span> strange and somewhat creepy conversations <\/b>happen. Here\u2019s a complete extract, courtesy of Facebook itself:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"i-1-ais-are-writing-their-own-perfect-languages-should-we-let-them\"<\/p>\n

The press misinterpreted the conversations (or didn\u2019t finish reading the original article from FastCo Design) and thought the end of Facebook\u2019s experiment was due to <\/span>company fear <\/b>that their AI had created its own secret language.<\/span><\/p>\n

Facebook DID shut down the conversation between the two bots. But they did so because they had made a mistake in the experiment. FAIR overlooked something: they\u00a0didn\u2019t motivate\u00a0the two bots to communicate using <\/span>English rules that a human could understand. <\/b>The bots simply spoke among themselves and created language shortcuts that, yes, give us the creeps because they seem nuts, but are completely harmless.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAgents will drift off understandable language and invent code words for themselves,\u201d FAIR explained. \u201cLike if <\/span>I say \u2018the\u2019 five times, you interpret that to mean I want five copies of this item. <\/b>This isn\u2019t so different from the way communities of humans create shorthands.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Facebook tossed out the experiment because they want bots to learn to talk to people. The result wasn\u2019t dangerous. It just wasn\u2019t practical. The bots had learned to divide <\/span>virtual balls<\/b>, but without using English rules that we all understand. So, the experiment wasn\u2019t worth much.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"rrhyrr\"<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to see how a story that starts with \u201ctwo bots manage to exchange virtual balls, but do it in their own way, which isn\u2019t helpful\u201d becomes <\/span>\u201cFacebook shuts down two bots because they created a new language and could pose a threat to humanity.\u201d <\/b>The second version is a thousand times more appealing than the first.<\/span><\/p>\n

In short: neither \u201cBob\u201d nor \u201cAlice\u201d are conspiring against us, nor are our lives in danger. In any case, the only ones who should be worried are <\/span>professional negotiators<\/b>; if these experiments keep going well, they\u2019ll be out of work.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source: <\/span>Gizmodo<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m sure you\u2019re aware of the mess that went down recently with a \u201cdangerous\u201d Facebook experiment. I\u2019m talking about the news that Facebook has shut down an Artificial Intelligence bot in development because it was starting to be too dangerous for humanity. In recent days, we\u2019ve seen disturbing\u00a0headlines like \u201cFacebook engineers panic, pull plug on … Continue reading “The baffling truth behind the AI Facebook shut down \u201cout of fear it was conspiring against humanity\u201d”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2057,"featured_media":92999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[],"tags":[2353],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-92978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-app-subdomain-redirectionfacebook"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2057"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":328641,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92978\/revisions\/328641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92978"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=92978"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=92978"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=92978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}