Jingulu--a language spoken by the Jingili people in the Northern Territory--has characteristics that allow it to be easily translated into AI commands. An Aboriginal language could hold the key to solving some of the most challenging communication problems between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. A new paper, published by Frontiers in Physics and led by UNSW Canberra's Professor Hussein Abbass, explains how Jingulu--a language spoken by the Jingili people in the Northern Territory--has characteristics that allow it to be easily translated into AI commands. "The Aboriginal people have a long history of contributions to the defense of Australia," Professor Abbass said. "During the Second World War their languages were used for secret communications. Today we are discovering that the wealth and richness of the Aboriginal languages and culture could hold the secret in human-AI interaction."

Bi-directional communication between humans and swarm systems begs for efficient languages to communicate information between the humans and the Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled agents in a manner that is most appropriate for the context. We discuss the criteria for effective teaming and functional bi-directional communication between humans and AI, and the design choices required to create effective languages. We then present a human-AI-teaming communication language inspired by the Australian Aboriginal language of Jingulu, which we call JSwarm. We present the motivation and structure of the language. An example is used to demonstrate how the language operates for a shepherding swarm guidance task.

Jingulu – a language spoken by the Jingili people in the Northern Territory – has characteristics that allow it to be easily translated into AI commands. A new language inspired by Jingulu could be applied to any situation where communication between humans and a large number of AI agents is required. An Aboriginal language could hold the key to solving some of the most challenging communication problems between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. A new paper, published by Frontiers in Physics and led by UNSW Canberra's Professor Hussein Abbass, explains how Jingulu – a language spoken by the Jingili people in the Northern Territory – has characteristics that allow it to be easily translated into AI commands. "The Aboriginal people have a long history of contributions to the defence of Australia," Professor Abbass said.

The approximately 400 languages of Aboriginal Australia can be grouped into 27 different families. To put that diversity in context, Europe has just four language families, Indo-European, Basque, Finno-Ugric and Semitic, with Indo-European encompassing such languages as English, Spanish, Russian and Hindi. Australia's largest language family is Pama-Nyungan. Before 1788 it covered 90% of the country and comprised about 300 languages. The territories on which Canberra (Ngunnawal), Perth (Noongar), Sydney (Daruk, Iyora), Brisbane (Turubal) and Melbourne (Woiwurrung) are built were all once owned by speakers of Pama-Nyungan languages. Australia's largest language family is Pama-Nyungan.