Ryan Boyd 47284216

17/09/21 – COSC260-21S2

How (in outline) does IBM’s Debater work? Is Debater strong AI, weak AI, or no AI? What lessons does
Debater teach us about promising future directions in AI?

IBM’s Debater is an “Autonomous debating system” developed by the IBM team. The purpose of Project
Debater is to create the first AI system that is able to argue against a human on complex topics. IBM
reasearch states that their goal is to “help people build persuasive arguments and make well-informed
decisions”.

The way Project Debater’s system works is through 4 main parts. These are as follows; Argument
mining, Debate construction, Argument knowledge base (or AKB) and Rebuttal. Together these
components work in tandem to create Debater’s AI. After being given a topic the pieces work in motion
to form a debate, this argument is controlled and delivered in a particular format and duration which
could be a possible limitation of Debater’s ability and an argument for calling it weak AI.

The Argument mining systems purpose is to use the in built knowledge retained by the AI in its offline
storage aswell as using an online search function to rank and sort data for the argument presented to
provide for Debaters stance, it also searches for related concepts that could provide further support.
The AKB pulls together arguments and can edit these from related debates to further justify a position,
it orders arguments, quotes, and related analogies for appropriate debate framing, it also maps counter
arguments for the rebuttal module. Rebuttal predicts what claims may be used by the opponent it pulls
from claims generated by the other modules aswell as from iDebate. Its also incharge of using IBM
watson’s speech to text technology to process the verbal arguments from the opponent. The final
component Debate construction incharge of cleaning up redundant arguments and sorting each into
clusters so that certain points are covered together using semantically similar aruments. The systems
aims to create a diverse set of high quality arguments in a paragraph by paragraph template, Debater
will frame the motion, present its general arguments derived from the AKB module, introduce its main
points and then enter into its cluster arguments and rebuttals.

Debater was considered to have a decent performance in 50 out of 78 of its scored motions this was
scored by annotators used to evaluate its final system perfomance. Note that the scorers were not
considered experienced debaters and the motions would most likely not be considered full “proper”
debates. While debater can argue decently a variety of topics aswell as learn from previous debates and
arguments added to its database through its various pathways. its heavily limited by its input and
environment. By the testing done while Debater is the most advanced debating AI it still falls short of an
expert human debater on average, and that is under conditions created explicity for the AI to be able to
work with. It is definately possible that Debater could realise IBM’s goal of helping people create more
substantial arguments as the average human isnt an expert debater but it is unlikely that Debater will be
able to change the minds of the masses or run for a parlimentary position in its current form. I believe
for these reasons Debater is weak AI. Its use is singular and limited and its learning capability isnt able to
push it past the point it needs to be.

Debater definitely provides a promising look at the future of AI. Even if Debater isnt winning debates
against humans being able to provide a realistic and authentic challenge is a win in its own right. Its
unlikely that Debater will receive further research development as it currently is because of IBM’s want
to turn the project into something more commercially viable. But knowing that a path towards genuine
Ryan Boyd 47284216

argumentative capability in an AI gives hope for future artificial intelligence being able to contain
personality and agency, as an entity that can effectively justify their words and feelings is certainly an
intelligent one, and if done uniquely exclusively through the AIs own action would be an incredible step
towards AI mastery.
Ryan Boyd 47284216

References

Shankland, S.(2019) IBM’s AI loses debate to a human, but it,s got worlds to conquer. Cnet.
https://www.cnet.com/news/ibms-ai-loses-to-human-debater-but-remains-
persuasive-technology/

IBM research What is Project Debater. https://www.research.ibm.com/interactive/project-d

ebater/about/

The international journal of science (2021) The Silicon Soapbox. Nature.

https://eorder.sheridan.com/3_0/app/orders/11030/files/assets/common/downloads/Slonim.pdf