IBM's AI machine nicknamed

Machines are day by day getting smarter and are creeping closer in understanding the human language with the help of Artificial Intelligence.

In a recent unusual public debate between a robot and a human, it was proved that these robots can't beat humans yet and have a long way ahead before being able to do so.

The debate was between Harish Natarajan, a finalist at the World Debating Championships in 2016 and his opponent was Project Debater, an AI system built by IBM nicknamed as Miss Debater. The goal behind this debate was to check whether AI can beat a human debate pro.

The topic of the debate was “Should we subsidize preschools?".

Both were given 15 min to think post which the debate started. While Nataranjan was scribbling on his pad, the AI debater was scanning 10 billion sentences in the hundreds of millions of documents to which it had access. After digging through all that information, it churned out a four-minute opening argument, a rebuttal, and a summary.

Project Debater, however, lost the debate. The reason being there is not what is required for a debate like a debater needs to process large amounts of information and construct relevant arguments at which the AI might excel. However, debating involves complicated arguments in a clear and structured way and you need to make those arguments matter to the audience. This requires the careful use of language, emotions, rhetoric, and examples which is quite challenging for an AI. However, with so many advances in AI, there might be a day when humans can be defeated.