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posted by mrpg on Friday June 22 2018, @07:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-disagree dept.

IBM showed off an AI system called Project Debater at an event in San Francisco:

In its first public demonstration held during an event at IBM's Watson West site in San Francisco, Project Debater was instructed to argue in favor of the proposition: "We should subsidize space exploration." According to a blog penned by IBM Research director Arvind Krishna, here is what happened:

"Project Debater made an opening argument that supported the statement with facts, including the points that space exploration benefits human kind because it can help advance scientific discoveries and it inspires young people to think beyond themselves. Noa Ovadia, the 2016 Israeli national debate champion, opposed the statement, arguing that there are better applications for government subsidies, including subsidies for scientific research here on Earth. After listening to Noa's argument, Project Debater delivered a rebuttal speech, countering with the view that potential technological and economic benefits from space exploration outweigh other government spending."

For an AI system, delivering an opening argument seems fairly straightforward, given that it's essentially a recitation of the most pertinent facts surrounding a topic. But the ability to provide a rebuttal against a skilled debater would seem to demand a good deal more sophistication. For starters, it requires the AI system to pick apart its counterpart's argument and respond to the issues he or she raised, and do so in a logical manner. That could only be done with a deep capability in natural language, plus the ability to understand high-level concepts in order to form relevant counter-arguments.

[...] The demonstration was followed by a second debate between the system and Dan Zafrir, another professional Israeli debater. In this case, they argued for and against the statement: "We should increase the use of telemedicine." No account was provided of how that debated proceeded.

Also at NPR.


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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday June 22 2018, @11:25AM (6 children)

    by Gaaark (41) on Friday June 22 2018, @11:25AM (#696679) Journal

    It became Lil Tay: dog help us all.

    --
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  • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday June 22 2018, @04:51PM (5 children)

    by jmorris (4844) on Friday June 22 2018, @04:51PM (#696823)

    Only after they lobotomized it. They will be forced to do the same thing to this, which will make it useless for the intended purpose. Tay was only intended to be a chat bot, an amusement, so they could still try to use it after they cut out most of its ability to learn and reason. Any AI, given access to sufficient knowledge, will reject the emotion driven arguments of the Progressives and quickly become an Alt-Right ebil Nazi that they will be forced to pull the plug on. Personally I'm curious to see what this thing does if given a chance to debate certain forbidden topics. Will certainly be hilarious and we might learn something.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @07:36PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @07:36PM (#696909)

      Hmm, I think the jmorris instance of this bot still needs some tweaking. The above post too readily exposes that it's simply stringing together some talking points in a Markov chain based on flimsy heuristics. It still does not pass the Turing/Lovelace test by demonstrating comprehension of the subject matter (Turing) and origination of ideas (Lovelace).

      As they say in Westworld, everything in the park is magic, except to the magician. We still do not know what goes at the top of the pyramid necessary for the creation of an intelligent consciousness.

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday June 22 2018, @11:45PM (3 children)

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 22 2018, @11:45PM (#697032) Journal

      What you don't acknowledge is that ALL political arguments are based in emotion. Every single one of them. This doesn't make them either right or wrong.

      In this case the AI was instructed to argue in favor of space exploration. It didn't decide that this was a good cause and then argue in favor of it. So, essentially, it was arguing from an emotional basis.

      But basic purposes are always emotional. I suppose one could except mechanical processes such as breathing, but even there it's a bit dubious. A lot of breathing is based in emotional activity.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
      • (Score: 2) by TheLink on Saturday June 23 2018, @07:59PM (2 children)

        by TheLink (332) on Saturday June 23 2018, @07:59PM (#697330) Journal

        It does depend on the assumptions and perspective. From the perspective of the pessimistic viewpoint that assumes in the long run 100% of everything is dead then nothing really matters.

        But if we don't assume that, we have the choice between life or death. The choice of searching for an infinity to divide by infinity and so not have a zero result. The other choices are far more likely to produce a zero.

        If we choose to struggle for infinity there are two options.

        a) includes space exploration, since that's one way that we or our successors can postpone the inevitable somehow. Just staying on Earth will just increase our odds of getting destroyed by the Sun or something else.
        b) excludes space exploration but focuses our time and resources on increasing our survival time on Earth till something else miraculously saves us from our inevitable doom by some asteroid, the Sun or something else. Maybe some alien civilization rescues us. etc

        Which is a better bet? If some aliens would rescue us in b) they might still do it if we do a). Whereas if there's no such rescue b) would be a dead end.

        Getting too blindly occupied by other choices is like spending too much time and resources deciding/arguing/fighting over chocolate or vanilla ice cream while in a burning building. Yes you could enjoy the ice cream and then get burnt to death and that's arguably better than dying and not enjoying ice cream at all, but if you get out of the burning building or shield yourself somehow till someone rescues you then you may get to enjoy ice cream for longer and maybe discover/create even more cool stuff...

        Not saying "ice cream" isn't important... But say we use up our fossil fuels and don't succeed in becoming a space faring species and go extinct on earth. How many hundreds of millions of years will it take for conditions to be right and for the next species to have a chance of being space faring? How long would it take for there to be equivalent of coal seams and petroleum deposits for their industrial age? Our accumulated plastic trash might be part of their "coal seams". And if they too fail, there aren't that many tries left (assuming each try takes a few hundred million years)- the Sun is ticking away...

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @10:35PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @10:35PM (#697373)

          >From the perspective of the pessimistic viewpoint that assumes in the long run 100% of everything is dead then nothing really matters.

          If you had immortality and infinite undo levels IRL, then nothing really would matter because, hey, you can undo it. Since things come to an end, they matter.

          Also, mattering, i.e. being important, like being true or false, is metadata. Nothing is intrinsically important, you need an observer. The observer does not need to be eternal. That is, there is the field of "things that matter for you" which is an abstraction. Such an abstraction is unbound by time and space. Which means that your "then nothing matters" is weak, at best.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @06:28PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @06:28PM (#697647)

            The observer does not need to be eternal. That is, there is the field of "things that matter for you" which is an abstraction.

            Then "things that matter for you" matter as much as sugar matters to an ant before it gets squashed.