Fancy a debate with a computer?

IBM has built a robot called Project Debater, designed to carry out public debates with humans. It has a female voice and it relies on a database of several hundred million articles covering about 100 subjects. It can put forward arguments to defend a point of view and respond to arguments put forward by human debaters, using speech recognition to “listen” to what is being said.

In a recent debate it held its own in a public forum, although it did not win hands down, according to observers. Its delivery was not as good as that of the human debater, but it did convey more information. It was criticized for its speech construction in that sentences did not always flow naturally from one to another.

In order to get Project Debater to construct an argument one must first propose a motion for debate and wait a short time for the robot to search its database for the most telling arguments, which it will assemble into a speech and for which it will sometimes give proper citations.

So should professional debaters, such as British Members of Parliament, be worried that machines will take over their jobs? Or - based on current evidence of what is heard every day in the House of Commons – can we sure that they have not already done so?

© John Welford