--- title: "Google Surprised When Experimental AI Learns Language It Was Never Trained On" description: "Like a human possessed, an AI made by Google appears to know things it wasn't trained to learn — and yeah, it's freaking us out. " date: "2023-04-17" modified: "2023-04-17" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-ai-bengali" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Google" tags: - "bard" - "Google" - "google ai" - "the digest" --- # Google Surprised When Experimental AI Learns Language It Was Never Trained On ![Like a human possessed, an AI made by Google appears to know things it wasn't trained to learn — and yeah, it's freaking us out. ]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* ## Linguistic Nightmare Like a human possessed, Google's artificial intelligence appears to know things it shouldn't — and yeah, it's freaking us out. In an [interview with CBS' *60 Minutes*](), Google tech exec James Manyika admitted that the company's AI had somehow learned a language on which it had not been trained. "We discovered that with very few amounts of prompting in Bengali," Manyika said, "it can now translate all of Bengali." As *CBS* notes, these kinds of "emergent properties" are "mysterious" and continue to puzzle developers even as they become more and more common. https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/1647742247444553732 ## Black Hole Later in the interview, CEO Sundar Pichai also affirmed that there is indeed some weird stuff going on with AI that even experts can't explain. "There is an aspect of this which we call — all of us in the field call it as a 'black box,'" he said in the interview. "You don’t fully understand. And you can’t quite tell why it said this." If you're weirded out by this concept, you're not at all alone — *CBS* interviewer Scott Pelley also questioned Pichai about how safe it was for Google to "turn \[its AI\] loose on society" if its own developers "don't fully understand how it works." The CEO's retort: "I don’t think we fully understand how a human mind works, either." **More on Google AI:** [*A Specific Innocuous Phrase Sends Google's AI Into an Existential Crisis*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()