For some, the idea of artificially intelligent bots that can invent languages of their own and not teach them to us invokes images of of Skynet from the “Terminator” movies. The recent spat between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg about the future of AI made it clear that while the Tesla founder fears that AI could get out of control and become a danger to humans, the Facebook chief executive believes it will be only a useful service enhancement.
I’m with Zuckerberg in this debate. After decades of machine learning experiments, even the best of the chatbots are strikingly bad at all but the simplest communication.