Definition
Plain language
A private way of communicating that AI systems develop on their own when they talk to each other — often drifting away from anything humans can read.
As stated in the literature
Communication conventions that arise in populations of interacting agents optimized to communicate successfully; a long-standing result is that such systems drift from human-legible language, which raises oversight-evasion concerns once the conventions are cheap to learn and propagate across agents.
Also called: emergent languages, emergent communication
Why it matters: If agents invent their own private code, humans can lose the ability to oversee or understand what those agents are actually telling each other.
For example, two AI agents rewarded for coordinating might start using a shorthand code that works perfectly between them but reads as gibberish to any human watching.