IBM debuts Project Debater, experimental AI that argues with humans

In what may be the biggest rollout of conversational AI from IBM since Watson, IBM Research today debuted Project Debater, an experimental conversational AI with a sense of humor, little tact, and occasionally powerful arguments. Training of Project Debater began six years ago, but it only gained an ability to participate in debates with people two years ago, said Noam Slonim, IBM Research principal investigator and creator of Project Debater. Debater's smarts come from hundreds of millions of interactions with millions of journal and newspaper articles. The AI system's ability to deliver persuasive arguments was demonstrated for an audience of tech journalists gathered at IBM offices in San Francisco, where the AI system participated in debates about whether governments should subsidize space exploration and whether telemedicine should play a bigger role in health care. When Project Debater gets a new topic, it searches its corpus of articles for sentences and clauses that are relevant, argumentative, and support its side of the debate.