Subject: Robots Successfully Invent Their Own Language

[jess tauber]

How nice, another arbitrarist NL AI system.

In real languages one very often sees iconicity switching to arbitrariness/symbolicity. Even the genetic code retains a great deal of iconic functionality (and what opacification it does display functions to facilitate combination and control at higher hierarchical levels). How much of human language coding has similarly shifted? How much of this works through systematic linkages we can't see because our focus is too narrow?

I doubt robots and other AI systems are going to be very successful anytime soon in emulating natural language unless people start paying attention to all this. In any case The Governator is now free so perhaps some experimentation is possible here. And if visited in the night by liquid metal assassins I will avow my undying allegiance to our new robotic overlords.

Jess Tauber
phonosemantics at earthlink.net