Talking Robots: Luc Steels - Evolution of Communication and Language

In this episode of Talking Robots, Markus Waibel interviews Luc Steels, a pioneer in AI, about his research in language evolution. Steels discusses his work on creating communication systems in autonomous, embodied agents, highlighting experiments like the Talking Heads project and the use of Sony AIBO robots. He explains how these robots develop ontologies, lexicons, and grammar through language games, emphasizing the importance of embodiment and perspective transformation. Steels also addresses the debate on the innate versus socio-cultural aspects of language, suggesting that language emerges from generic cognitive components and social interaction rather than specific language genes. The conversation touches on practical applications of this research, such as collaborative tagging on the web, and future goals in understanding language evolution and its connection to AI.