Intelligent Living
Harish Natarajan with Project Debator monolith. Credit: IBM
Technology

Artificial Intelligence Debates Humans On The Benefits Of AI

Project Debater is an artificial intelligence (AI) system by IBM designed to debate humans on complex topics. This is the first machine of its kind, it’s purpose is assisting people to build more persuasive arguments and make well-informed decisions. The two leading researchers behind the creation of Project Debater are Dr. Ranit Aharonov and Dr. Noam Slonim.

To test out the AI’s capabilities, they put Project Debater in the spotlight with the topic of the “benefits of artificial intelligence.” It argued both sides, for and against the subject, with one human teammate on each team. The University of Cambridge Union hosted the debate.

Project Debater at the Cambridge Union Society
Project Debater at the Cambridge Union Society. Credit: Katia Moskvitch of IBM

Aharanov said:

The potential of Project Debater lies in its ability to understand both sides of a problem and present all the pros and cons so you have a wider view of the topic and then can make a better decision.

Slonim added:

Ultimately, what we saw was that the interaction of man and machine could be enriching for both. It’s not a question of one being better than the other, but about AI and humans working together.

The robot spoke with the voice of a female American, giving each side’s opening statements by using arguments drawn from over 1,100 human submissions made before the event online. It used an application called “speech by crowd” to generate cases by analyzing all the human submissions. It sorted all the information into key themes, then identified redundancy and eliminated them. What remained was usable data for the debate.

Explaining the artificial intelligence
IBM’s Noam Slonim, at the Cambridge Union debating society in Cambridge, England. Credit: IBM

Project Debater’s opening remarks on the proposition side (AI will bring more harm than good) were:

AI can cause a lot of harm. AI will not be able to make a decision that is the morally correct one, because morality is unique to humans. AI companies still have too little expertise on how to properly assess datasets and filter out bias, … AI will take human bias and will fixate it for generations.

Its argument on the opposition side is where it slipped up a bit. While it was advocating for the overall benefits of AI, it argued that AI would bring about new jobs and “bring a lot more efficiency to the workplace.” But then, it said:

AI capabilities caring for patients or robots teaching schoolchildren – there is no longer a demand for humans in those fields either.

Other times, it either repeated itself, or it failed to provide detailed examples to support its claims. In the end, the pro-AI side won by a fraction, earning 51.22% of the audience vote.

The plan for Project Debater is to use it as a tool for gathering feedback from vast numbers of people. IBM sees the speech-by-crowd AI being useful when governments seek public opinions about policies or when companies want input from employees.

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