Opening page…
Should AIs be allowed to talk to each other in a language we can't read?
A shared language can create a private world that outsiders cannot enter.
14 people have answered this.
Your answer
A little context
Two colleagues have started using a shorthand you don't understand, a joke here, an initial there, and the work gets done faster. You don't think they are plotting anything. You just notice that you have been left outside a conversation you used to be part of.
Nearby questions
- Have you ever made up a word because no real one fit?Families and friends keep words nobody else knows. Wittgenstein doubted a word could mean anything if only one person could check it.
- Can you think without words?Wittgenstein wrote that the limits of his language meant the limits of his world. Yet everyone has felt something they had no word for.
- Is the sentence 'This sentence is false' true or false?If it's true, then it's false. If it's false, then it's true. The puzzle is more than two thousand years old.
- When you say 'I'm fine', are you lying?A story improved in the telling, a confident guess, an 'I'm fine' at the dinner table: plenty of what we say isn't trying to inform anyone.
- What does a name change?When you give something a name — a pet, a car, a machine — what changes: the thing, what you owe it, or you?
