Something unexpected happened recently at the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research lab. 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.

And also: What does this language actually look like? Here’s an example of one of the bot negotiations that Facebook observed:

• 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
• Bob: you i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
• Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me
• Bob: i i can i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
• Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me
• Bob: i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
• Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
• Bob: you i i i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
• Alice: balls have 0 to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
• Bob: you i 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

Not only does this appear to be nonsense, but the bots don’t really seem to be getting anywhere in the negotiation. Alice isn’t budging from her original position, anyway. The weird thing is, Facebook’s data shows that conversations like this sometimes still led to successful negotiations between the bots in the end.

There seems to be something more language-like occurring, Facebook’s researchers say. Other AI researchers, too, say they’ve observed machines that can develop their own languages, including languages with a coherent structure, and defined vocabulary and syntax—though not always actual meaningful, by human standards.

The implications of this kind of work are dizzying. Not only are researchers beginning to see how bots could communicate with one another, they may be scratching the surface of how syntax and compositional structure emerged among humans in the first place.

So the question of whether Facebook’s bots really made up their own language depends on what we mean when we say “language.”

Could Facebook’s bot language—Facebotlish, he calls it—signal a new and lasting kind of language?

Read the full article, here.