IBM is working on an artificial intelligence (AI) that has to debate with people. In order to achieve this, the company is now calling on people to submit arguments. That’s what The Next Web says. The AI was shown in Las Vegas last week.
IBM calls the project “Project Debater – Speech by Crowd”. It’s a “new and experimental cloud-based AI platform to crowdsource decision support,” the company said. It collects arguments for and against a specific subject from as many people as possible. These arguments are then used to make speeches in debates.
The project is still under development. Big Blue hopes, however, that in the end it can reveal a system that is able to debate with people. This should do it without prejudice. But instead of using factual information to form arguments, it uses people’s own opinions.
First debates
The system has already had a number of initial debates. In addition, it gave people subjects to discuss and collected their arguments. The system then came up with speeches based on that input. At CES, for example, the subject of “We should all become vegetarians” was discussed. There were two different speeches, one for each side of the argument.
For example, in its speech in favour of the position, the system put forward the argument that vegetarians are less likely to become ill. The AI also stated that there is less chance of discrimination in cultures where there are more vegetarians. However, in the speech against the position, the AI said that it is less healthy for people to stop eating meat. The system also pointed out that it is bad for the production of meat to become a vegetarian.
IBM does state that the AI does not yet have a good command of the English language. The company has chosen to keep errors in the text intact. As a result, there are various errors in the speeches, which can be read and listened to online. It is also possible to participate online in the collection of arguments, via a special website. The project will be shown again in February at the Big Blue Think conference in San Francisco.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.
12 hours ago
