Could we ever decipher an alien language? Uncovering how AI communicates may be the key

By Olaf Lipinski, PhD Student in Artificial Intelligence, University of Southampton

In the 2016 science fiction movie Arrival, a linguist is faced with the daunting task of deciphering an alien language consisting of palindromic phrases, which read the same backwards as they do forwards, written with circular symbols. As she discovers various clues, different nations around the world interpret the messages differently – with some assuming they convey a threat.

If humanity ended up in such a situation today, our best bet may be to turn to research uncovering how artificial intelligence (AI) develops languages.

But what exactly defines a language? Most of…

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