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In February 2019, Project Debater once represented artificial intelligence in a human debate competition. Although it failed to win the competition, the AI system can not only express its own views clearly without any preparation for the topic of the debate beforehand. He refuted the opponent’s argument and pointed out the factual mistakes made by the opponent more accurately. It can also be called a glorious defeat.
“Hello, Harish.” Debater opened with this, its appearance is a tall black box, and its voice is a female voice. In the design of this system, the IBM Research Institute provided a voice based on an actress in New York. However, IBM Research has done some processing to make it an obvious synthetic voice, but the voice does not sound monotonous, and the expressiveness is good, which is very important for the debate.
Opposing debater, 2016 World Debate Finalist and European Debate Champion Harish Natarajan.
Before the debate, 79% of the audience supported the orthodox view and agreed that preschool education should be subsidized, while 13% disagreed. In the vote again after the debate, 62% of the people supported the positive view and 30% supported the negative. Through the debate, Harish got more votes, and Debater’s turnout rate dropped, so Harish won the debate.
