This just feels like one of these topics where you'd really want a liguist. Someone who really understands the construction and evolution of langauge to observe some of the underlying reasons for why language is constructed the way it is. Because I guess that's what DALL-E partly is, it's trying to approximate that, and the interesting thing would be where it differs from real language, rather than matches it. If I give it a made up word that looks like the latin phrase that looks like a species of bird, then it working like I've given it a latin phrase that is a species of bird is pretty reasonable. If you said to me "Homo heidelbergensis" I wouldn't know that was a species of pre-historic human, but I would feel pretty comfortable making that kind of leap.
I also think you could probably hire a team of linguists pretty cheap compared to a team of AI engineers.
I don't think that this related to language, at all. First, let's ask, is there a way for DALL-E to refuse an output (as in, this makes no sense). Then, what would we expect the output for gibberish to be like? Isn't this still subject to filtering for best "clarity" and best signals? While I don't think that these are collisions in the traditional sense of a hash collision, any input must produce a signal, as there is no null path, and what we see is sort of a result of "collisions" with "legitimate" paths. Still, this may tell us some about the inner structure.
Also, there is no way for vocabulary to exist on its own without grammar, as these are two sides of the phenomenon, we call language. Some signs of grammar had to emerge together with this, at once. However…
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Edit: Let's imagine a typical movie scene. Our nondescript individual points at himself and utters "Atuk" (yes, Ringo Starr!) and then points at his counterpart in this conversation, who utters "Carl Benjamin von Richterslohe". This involves quite an elaborate system of grammar, where we already know that we're asking for a designator, that this is not the designator for the act of pointing, and that by decidedly pointing at a specific object, we'd ask for a specific designator not a general one. Then, C.B. von Richterslohe, our fearless explorer, waves his hand over the backdrop of the jungle, asking for "blittiri" in an attempt to verify that this means "bird", for which Atuk readily points out a monkey. – While only nouns have been exchanged, there's a ton of grammar in this.
And we haven't even arrived at things like, "a monkey sitting at the foot of a tree". Which is mostly about the horizontal and vertical axes of grammar, along which we align things and where we can substitute one thing for another in a specific position, which ultimately provides them with meaning (by what combinations and substitutions are legitimate ones and which are not).
Now, in light of this, that specific compounds are changing their alleged "meaning" radically, when aligned (composed), doesn't allow for high hopes for this to be language.
> Now, in light of this, that specific compounds are changing their alleged "meaning" radically, when aligned (composed), doesn't allow for high hopes for this to be language.
To clarify: that these triggers do produce (radically) different results when provided in varying compositional context, like "as cartoon", "as painting", etc, (i.e, "a as b") suggests that these are just random alliterations that serve merely by accident as synonyms, rather than having a specific value in that position. The latter being a requirement for language. (And it wouldn't be too far fetched to supposed that these are just some "residual" values, when showing up in pseudo-textual compositions. As there had to be some trigger for that.)
I was thinking about a system for pulling data from verbal nonsense the other day, speaking in tongues or something similar. I can create a bunch of noises that lack obvious meaning for me, but obviously they have some meaning that can be learned since humans are terrible at being truly random (lol XD).
I wonder what level I would be able to share ideas I lack the words for, my perceived bitrate at creating "random" noise is certainly higher than when verbally communicating an idea to another human. Will we even share a common language in the future? Or will we have our own language that is translated to other people?
Well, I can only answer with kind of a pun. With Wittgenstein, language is a constant conversation about the extent of the world, about what is and what is not. As such, it is necessarily shared. In the tractatus we find,
> 5.62 (…) For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest.
The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world. [1]
So, something could become apparent, but you would still haven't said anything (as it's not part of that conversation). ;-)
I also think you could probably hire a team of linguists pretty cheap compared to a team of AI engineers.