1,060 research outputs found
Emergent Language Generalization and Acquisition Speed are not tied to Compositionality
Studies of discrete languages emerging when neural agents communicate to
solve a joint task often look for evidence of compositional structure. This
stems for the expectation that such a structure would allow languages to be
acquired faster by the agents and enable them to generalize better. We argue
that these beneficial properties are only loosely connected to
compositionality. In two experiments, we demonstrate that, depending on the
task, non-compositional languages might show equal, or better, generalization
performance and acquisition speed than compositional ones. Further research in
the area should be clearer about what benefits are expected from
compositionality, and how the latter would lead to them
From Analogue to Digital Vocalizations
Sound is a medium used by humans to carry information.
The existence of this kind of
medium is a pre-requisite for language. It is organized
into a code, called speech, which
provides a repertoire of forms that is shared in each
language community. This code is necessary to support the linguistic
interactions that allow humans to communicate.
How then may a speech code be formed prior to the
existence of linguistic interactions?
Moreover, the human speech code is characterized by several
properties: speech is digital and compositional (vocalizations
are made of units re-used systematically in other syllables);
phoneme inventories have precise regularities as well as
great diversity in human languages; all the speakers of a
language community categorize sounds in the same manner,
but each language has its own system of categorization,
possibly very different from every other.
How can a speech code with these properties form?
These are the questions we will approach in the paper. We will
study them using the method of the artificial. We will
build a society of artificial agents, and study what mechanisms
may provide answers. This will not prove directly what mechanisms
were used for humans, but rather give ideas about what kind
of mechanism may have been used. This allows us to shape the
search space of possible answers, in particular by showing
what is sufficient and what is not necessary.
The mechanism we present is based on a low-level model of
sensory-motor interactions. We show that the integration of certain very
simple and non language-specific neural devices
allows a population of agents to build a speech code that
has the properties mentioned above. The originality is
that it pre-supposes neither a functional pressure for
communication, nor the ability to have coordinated
social interactions (they do not play language or imitation
games). It relies on the self-organizing properties of a generic
coupling between perception and production both
within agents, and on the interactions between agents
Towards More Human-like AI Communication: A Review of Emergent Communication Research
In the recent shift towards human-centric AI, the need for machines to
accurately use natural language has become increasingly important. While a
common approach to achieve this is to train large language models, this method
presents a form of learning misalignment where the model may not capture the
underlying structure and reasoning humans employ in using natural language,
potentially leading to unexpected or unreliable behavior. Emergent
communication (Emecom) is a field of research that has seen a growing number of
publications in recent years, aiming to develop artificial agents capable of
using natural language in a way that goes beyond simple discriminative tasks
and can effectively communicate and learn new concepts. In this review, we
present Emecom under two aspects. Firstly, we delineate all the common
proprieties we find across the literature and how they relate to human
interactions. Secondly, we identify two subcategories and highlight their
characteristics and open challenges. We encourage researchers to work together
by demonstrating that different methods can be viewed as diverse solutions to a
common problem and emphasize the importance of including diverse perspectives
and expertise in the field. We believe a deeper understanding of human
communication is crucial to developing machines that can accurately use natural
language in human-machine interactions.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figures, 2 table
What Makes a Language Easy to Deep-Learn?
Neural networks drive the success of natural language processing. A
fundamental property of language is its compositional structure, allowing
humans to produce forms for new meanings systematically. However, unlike
humans, neural networks notoriously struggle with systematic generalization,
and do not necessarily benefit from compositional structure in emergent
communication simulations. This poses a problem for using neural networks to
simulate human language learning and evolution, and suggests crucial
differences in the biases of the different learning systems. Here, we directly
test how neural networks compare to humans in learning and generalizing
different input languages that vary in their degree of structure. We evaluate
the memorization and generalization capabilities of a pre-trained language
model GPT-3.5 (analagous to an adult second language learner) and recurrent
neural networks trained from scratch (analaogous to a child first language
learner). Our results show striking similarities between deep neural networks
and adult human learners, with more structured linguistic input leading to more
systematic generalization and to better convergence between neural networks and
humans. These findings suggest that all the learning systems are sensitive to
the structure of languages in similar ways with compositionality being
advantageous for learning. Our findings draw a clear prediction regarding
children's learning biases, as well as highlight the challenges of automated
processing of languages spoken by small communities. Notably, the similarity
between humans and machines opens new avenues for research on language learning
and evolution.Comment: 32 pages, major update: improved text, added new analyses, added
supplementary materia
Natural Language Does Not Emerge 'Naturally' in Multi-Agent Dialog
A number of recent works have proposed techniques for end-to-end learning of
communication protocols among cooperative multi-agent populations, and have
simultaneously found the emergence of grounded human-interpretable language in
the protocols developed by the agents, all learned without any human
supervision!
In this paper, using a Task and Tell reference game between two agents as a
testbed, we present a sequence of 'negative' results culminating in a
'positive' one -- showing that while most agent-invented languages are
effective (i.e. achieve near-perfect task rewards), they are decidedly not
interpretable or compositional.
In essence, we find that natural language does not emerge 'naturally',
despite the semblance of ease of natural-language-emergence that one may gather
from recent literature. We discuss how it is possible to coax the invented
languages to become more and more human-like and compositional by increasing
restrictions on how two agents may communicate.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables, accepted at EMNLP 2017 as short pape
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