Each week, we spotlight a cool innovation recommended by some of the industry's top tech writers. This week's pick is an AI that can argue.
IBM has created an artificially intelligent system that "can 'debate' with humans," said Cade Metz and Steve Lohr at The New York Times. Debater draws from a library of hundreds of millions of newspaper and academic-journal articles to form its responses, and can spar with a human debater on about 100 topics so far. At a recent unveiling event in San Francisco, Debater argued in favor of government subsidies for space exploration, with each side offering a four-minute introductory speech, a four-minute rebuttal to the other's arguments, and a two-minute closing statement.
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