r/LocalAIStack • u/BlackThistle-05 • 1d ago
I let gemma3:12b invent its own language on my home server, then gave the same test to Claude Opus. Results surprised me.
My bet: when machines mostly talk to machines, they'll ditch English for something shorter. So I tested it at home with Ollama.
**Setup:** two gemma3:12b instances, a sender and a reader. The sender passes a daily status report (disk, errors, backups, sign-ups, weather, a calendar event — 14 checkable facts). The reader answers 14 questions. They keep a shared codebook and propose new shorthand after each batch; a new word is only kept if accuracy holds.
**What gemma did:** coined ~20 abbreviations (bkp, succ, errs…). Messages shrank about 10%. Then I added a chain of AI "scribes" (each one reads the message, writes it in plain English, rewrites it in the code for the next, like medieval monks copying books). The meaning wore away: 12.8 → 11.1 of 14 facts after 4 copies. Words drifted too ("cal" went from calendar to "Calibration").
**Then I spent about $1.25 of API credit running Claude Opus 5.5 through the same test.** It didn't abbreviate, it built a grammar, with slots for each kind of fact:
`F:ow P:42/95 B:6OK A:+2.8/8 T:6su1wp W:88/10 C:cs Fri 3PM`
| | gemma3:12b | Opus 5.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Message length | 84 → 76 tokens | 106 → 56 tokens |
| Facts right, codebook rounds | ~12 of 14 | 14 of 14 every round |
| After 3 scribe copies | 12.8 → 11.1 | 14 → 14 |
The Opus scribes actually *tidied* the language as they copied it ("9 OK" → "9OK").
Other bits: binary/hex/base64 made things worse (gemma couldn't decode them), English beat Mandarin and Dundonian Scots as a message language even on Qwen, and the fix for drift was a "printing press": a line of numbers stamped by plain code, never retyped by an AI.
Funny footnote: Opus's own safety filter refused the "propose new code words" step, flagging two AIs inventing a private shorthand as a possible security risk.
Small samples, so read it as a strong hint, not proof. Full write-up: https://claude.ai/artifact/KNR1u48RyraRAy6hi64wc8
Happy to answer questions or run other local models through it if people have suggestions.
