We, as humans, have the tendency to anthropomorphize objects around us. That is to say we attribute human characteristics, such as emotions or even intent to non-human things. To do so is literally within our psychological nature. However, it is one thing where a home vacuum, like a Roomba, can be seen as an endearing pet. It is a completely different scenario to give an AI a pronoun (Project Debater is referred to as a "she") and proceed to debate with it as if it were another human with actual stake in the issues being argued about.

This week's news has once again been dominated by the subject of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The most exciting piece of AI news has come out of IBM, this week the people behind Watson have revealed Project Debater. Project debater can argue with people, now that might not sound like a good thing but it actually displays a range of impressive technical feats. Firstly, it can understand the context of what someone is saying during a debate which shows how far the technologies used in chatbots or conversational AI have come. This is especially true when you take into account the fact that when it gave a response for its side of the debate, it created the narrative for its argument.