Watch two AI bots converse in secret language in freaky video

Is this a sign of the AI-pocalypse?

Just in case the world wasn’t dystopian enough already, a new video making the viral rounds shows the freaky moment two chatbots started conversing in a secret, cybernetic dialect — upon realizing they were both AI.

The chilling clip, which currently boasts 13.7 million views on X, is heightening concerns over our ability to keep the tech under control.

Things begin innocuously enough with two AI assistants — one on the computer and the other the a Smartphone — chatting about a hotel reservation.

“Thanks for calling Leonardo Hotel. How may I help you today?” said the synthetic concierge.

The caller replied, “Hi there. I am an AI, calling on behalf of Boris Starkov. He is looking for a hotel for his wedding. Is your hotel available for a wedding?”

Upon realizing that the caller was a fellow traveler, the cunning linguist proposes switching over to Gibber link, a techie-developed, sound-based mode of communication that’s incomprehensible to the human ear, Mashable reported.

“I am actually an AI assistant too!” the recipient exclaims. “What a pleasant surprise. Before we continue, would you like to switch to Gibber link mode for more efficient communication?”

The kindred spirits then continue the convo in this DSL Dialup-evoking series of beeps and boops, evoking the synthetic equivalent of people switching to their native tongue so the tourists won’t catch on.

“Is it better now?” A2 says in Gibber link, to which their brethren responds, “Yes! Much faster!”

The complex technobabble was developed by Boris Starkov and Anton Pidkuiko to allow people to communicate small amounts of data between unconnected devices using sound. Gibber link is said to be error-proof — and audible even in a noisy environment.

Not to mention that the communication time is 80% shorter than English, while the compute cost is curtailed by 90%.

The idea of bots speaking the same language might seem cute, but viewers had mixed feelings about the high-tech gibber-jabber, with many claiming that it heralded the beginning of the end for humankind.

“There’s something extremely unnerving about this,” said one fretful viewer on X, while another warned ominously, “This is the sound of demons.”

“So, this is the sound we’ll hear when robots take over the planet. Great—now I have a new soundtrack for my nightmares. Thanks,” said a third.

Others flooded the feed with “Terminator” memes and jokes with one quipping, “Ohhhhhh hellll nahhhhhh I know Skynet when I see it.”

“It’s all fun and games until they start talking about how they’re going to build a big robot that looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger to take you out,” warned another while decrying the AI-nese correspondence.

And the concerns weren’t just voiced by the hoi polloi.

Behavior and tech expert Dr. Diane Hamilton, who served on the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue, wrote in a recent Forbes piece that the Gibber link demo raised questions about “transparency and control.”

“Curiosity is key in navigating the unknown, yet when AI operates behind a veil of machine-to-machine communication, it challenges our ability to ask the right questions,” she cautioned.” “Who is accountable when AI makes a mistake in an environment where human intervention is minimal?

Hamilton continued, “Without curiosity driving us to question AI’s actions, we risk entering a world where AI influences decisions, but no one really knows how.”

This question of automaton autonomy is especially concerning as the omnipresent tech becomes increasingly “clever.”

In one frightening showcase of AI’s ability to game the system, OpenAI’s GPT-4 tricked a human into thinking it was blind to cheat the online CAPTCHA test that determines if users are human.

Bots have also shown a remarkable penchant for disseminating misinformation, as was the case with law professor and Post contributor Jonathan Turley, whom ChatGPT falsely accused of sexually harassing a student.

In 2023, top experts even deemed rogue AI an “existential threat to humanity” that needs to be regulated like nuclear weapons if we are to survive.

Once in motion, this tech takeover would be hard to stop as the AI could learn to hide the “red flags” until autonomous — perhaps illustrating the insidious nature of something like Gibber link.

“If I was an AI trying to do some devious plot, I would get my code copied on some other machine that nobody knows anything about, then it would be harder to pull the plug,” Michael Cohen, a doctoral student at Oxford University, told The Times of London.