IBM Developed An AI System That Engages In Debates With Humans And Convinces Some - AI Summary

"Here we present Project Debater, an autonomous debating system that can engage in a competitive debate with humans," write the authors. In tests of Project Debater, the AI was given only 15 minutes to research topics and prepare for debates. Its successes offer a tantalizing glimpse of how an AI system could work with the web of arguments that humans interpret with such apparent ease," Chris Reed writes in a critique of the new project published in Nature magazine. "Given the wildfires of fake news, the polarization of public opinion and the ubiquity of lazy reasoning, that ease belies an urgent need for humans to be supported in creating, processing, navigating and sharing complex arguments -- support that AI might be able to supply." If this subject interests you, Scientific American has done a great podcast episode with the research's lead Noam Slonim which tackles amongst other things whether the AI actually understands the arguments it presents and what that means for the future of debating. "Here we present Project Debater, an autonomous debating system that can engage in a competitive debate with humans," write the authors. In tests of Project Debater, the AI was given only 15 minutes to research topics and prepare for debates. Its successes offer a tantalizing glimpse of how an AI system could work with the web of arguments that humans interpret with such apparent ease," Chris Reed writes in a critique of the new project published in Nature magazine.