The current mainstream approach to train natural language systems is to
expose them to large amounts of text. This passive learning is problematic if
we are interested in developing interactive machines, such as conversational
agents. We propose a framework for language learning that relies on multi-agent
communication. We study this learning in the context of referential games. In
these games, a sender and a receiver see a pair of images. The sender is told
one of them is the target and is allowed to send a message from a fixed,
arbitrary vocabulary to the receiver. The receiver must rely on this message to
identify the target. Thus, the agents develop their own language interactively
out of the need to communicate. We show that two networks with simple
configurations are able to learn to coordinate in the referential game. We
further explore how to make changes to the game environment to cause the "word
meanings" induced in the game to better reflect intuitive semantic properties
of the images. In addition, we present a simple strategy for grounding the
agents' code into natural language. Both of these are necessary steps towards
developing machines that are able to communicate with humans productively.

本文提出了一种基于多智能体交互通信的语言学习框架，在指代游戏的上下文中研究了这种学习方法，通过联系人工智能代理人彼此通信以识别随机图像，在通过调整游戏环境来提高代理人交流的自适应语言结构，并为代理人的代码提出简单的系统，从而使其更好地恰当地通信，并能更有效地与人类沟通。