IBM Research has created an artificial intelligence system that can analyze 300 million articles, records on a given topic and create a convincing speech about it. It will take a person who reads twenty-four hours a day about 2000 years to get through the same material. IBM Project Debater does it in 10 minutes.
Achievements in artificial intelligence
It is the latest AI technology in a series of daunting challenges from IBM. Deep Blue first took over chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.
In 2011, IBM Watson defeated the human champion on the Jeopardy game show. Now Project Debater brings us closer to mastering human language, a key goal in artificial intelligence (AI) research.
IBM researchers with a background in computational reasoning have been working on an AI debate system for six years. In 2018, IBM demonstrated Project Debater's ability to embrace a statement it had never seen before.
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The next month, the system is being used by people speaking to live audiences. Both of them will be given the same topic and given ten minutes to compose a speech about it.
In addition to presenting one side of the argument, the AI system will have to listen to the speech of the person participating in the debate, understand it and form a rebuttal belief. Researchers assure that Project Debater will quickly cope with this task.
Bringing artificial intelligence to the debate
The first statement was: "Gambling that should be banned." Project Debater collected all the opinions, analyzed them, and gave two speeches, one in support of this statement and the other in opposition.
The system identified which opinions were most visible and eliminated redundancy by recognizing which opinions it had already captured.
The speech consisted of 332 words, and it was stated that gambling should be prohibited. Three reasons are offered with arguments: gambling is addictive, promotes criminal activity and has killed many people and families.
The second speech is convincing that this gambling should not be prohibited - there are also three reasons.
The Debater project marks an important milestone on the road to understanding the language. An AI system can complement human decision making by bringing facts and evidence into a compelling logical structure.
By understanding people's views on various topics, politicians, government officials and business leaders will be able to better understand what the public thinks about a policy or corporate decision and why they think so.
AI lacks one critical human quality
It is understandable that people start to worry when they hear that the artificial intelligence system is getting better at something that we consider to be a unique human quality. While Project Debater can synthesize human arguments into reasonably coherent speech, there is nothing to worry about because this system has no feelings.
Neuroscientists have also found that without emotion, humans would not be able to make even the smallest decision.
IBM researchers dream of many things, and their dreams help us achieve a much greater understanding of human language, an understanding that could help us make better decisions on the complex topics facing our world.
How do you feel about such developments? Do they need humanity?
Author: Ekaterina Yagnyuk