IBM's newest AI project could be your next debate partner

Artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing steadily -- but how can we measure those gains in human terms? To gauge AI's progress, we can point to a handful of milestones: In 1997, Deep Blue defeated grandmaster Garry Kasparov in a chess match. In 2011, IBM Watson challenged "Jeopardy!" In both of these examples, computers were programmed to learn from each defeat, refining their strategy until they could match the very best players. Now, IBM Research has revealed another key moment in AI, a new project that we have been incubating since 2012-- Project Debater. And we asked ourselves, "What's next for AI?" The answer, first proposed by scientists in our research lab in Haifa, Israel, was itself a question, and an irresistible one at that: "Could a machine dialogue with us intelligently?"