Cambridge Union is the 200-year-old debating society in Cambridge, England. It has played host to world leaders and famous arguments over politics and culture.
For the first time, Cambrdige Union allowed a non-human to participate in the debate at 150-year-old Debating Chamber that once hosted British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, US President Theodore Roosevelt, the current Dalai Lama and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking .
IBM’s “Project Debater” artificial intelligence software was used to assist two teams of humans to debate the topic about whether artificial intelligence would bring more harm than good.
The AI used an application known as “speech by crowd” to generate its arguments, analysing arguments people sent in online. Project Debater then sorted the submissions into key themes, as well as identifying redundancy. It debated for both sides.
Human debates have long been one of the most intellectually challenging tasks that exist. Some actions, though, such as understanding whether an argument is for or against, are intuitive to us — but incredibly complex to a machine. Then there’s the challenge of judging the argument to be of high enough quality to persuade others. And finally, the AI also has to arrange the arguments in a narrative way understandable by humans.
It is not the first time for the IBM’s Project Debater to argue against a Human. But it is the first time it is part of a Team including Humans. So, it proved that it can work with Humans.
News Source: IBM Research
