For several years now, the artificial intelligence Project Debater from IBM has been learning to prove to people its opinion and win arguments. In June 2018, he opposed and defeated Israeli host Dan Zafir in a dispute over subsidies for space exploration and telemedicine. The other day he faced a more serious opponent - the world debate champion Harish Natarajan. They met at an IBM conference in San Francisco and discussed the benefits and harms of subsidizing early childhood education. The dispute turned out to be very tense and interesting.
The topic of the debate was not known in advance, but was announced immediately before the start of the event. Project Debater's artificial intelligence task was to convince viewers of the benefits of subsidies, and Harish Natarajan opposed this. The participants were given 15 minutes to prepare - during this time, the AI studied 10 billion news materials, and Harish sketched out pan talks.
The debate was divided into several parts: four-minute speeches, answers to the opponent's arguments, and a final word of two minutes. Project Debater started off with a little joke:
In defense of the subsidies, artificial intelligence announced that government support could protect disadvantaged children. In his opinion, helping those in need should be a moral obligation of every person. Natarajan responded to these words by saying that subsidies do not necessarily mean a guaranteed improvement in the quality of education. In his opinion, such measures may be a simple distribution of money to representatives of the middle class, and people in need may not get help.
When Natarajan suggested that some children may not need kindergarten, artificial intelligence re-interpreted his words as "My opponent said kindergartens are harmful." Despite such barbs, the debate champion was more concrete and compelling than Project Debater.
416 people from the auditorium acted as judges. They used smartphones to vote before and after the debate. During his speech, Harish Natarajan convinced 17% of the audience, so the victory was awarded to him. Artificial intelligence, in turn, was able to bring viewers much more new knowledge than humans. According to Harish, Project Debater is a very strong contender, and it makes arguments that are quite convincing and appropriate to the context of the dispute.
Promotional video:
Ramis Ganiev
