«Breaking News» Human debate champion defeats IBM's smartest EVER AI-powered machine

Humankind has notched up a rare victory against the machines in the ongoing battle  with artificial intelligence.  

London's Harish Natarajan, 31, was a grand finalist at the 2016 World Debating Championship and defeated IBM's Miss Debater in a discussion regarding the potential subsidising of pre-schooling. 

The computer draws on more than ten billion sentences from a variety of areas, including scientific research and newspaper cuts.

A lecture theatre of 700 people deemed the human participant to be the victor after hearing a four-minute opening statement, a four-minute rebuttal, and a two-minute summary. 

The machine is the culmination of seven years of research and builds on the success of IBM's Watson project. 

Watson pioneered the field of artificial intelligence but has not been without criticism. 

Last year it provided 'often inaccurate' and 'unsafe' treatment recommendations for cancer patients when used as part of an oncology system.

It recently defeated the world's most accomplished humans at Chess, Go and Dota 2.

London's Harish Natarajan, 31, defeated IBM's Miss Debater in San Francisco. Miss Debater was arguing in favour of the motion and Mr Natarajan argued against it

It was developed over seven years by researchers in multiple countries, including Israel and India.

Miss Debater, renamed after initially being called Project Debater, is programmed to learn from a back-catalogue of data as well as responding to the individual. 

A female voice delivered the argument of the machine from a black monolith that stands as tall as a human and has three blue lights present on a display.  

Neither Mr Natarajan or Miss Debater had time to prepare for the debate before the day and just 15 minutes before it began to swat up on the topic. 

Miss Debater was arguing in favour of the motion and Mr Natarajan argued against it. 

The machine opened the argument by welcoming its opponent and predicting its emergence as victor.

It said: 'Greeting Harish. I have heard that you hold the world record in debate competitions against humans. 

'But I suspect you've never debated a machine. Welcome to the future.' 

It opened its argument with a well constructed argument with several nuanced points. 

A lecture theatre of 700 people deemed the human participant to be the victor after hearing a four-minute opening statement, a four-minute rebuttal, and a two-minute summary

Miss Debater opened its argument with a well constructed argument with several nuanced points and Mr Natarajan countered

HUMAN V ROBOT DEBATE: THE FACTS AND QUIPS 

Name: Project Debater 

Age: Seven 

Hometown: IBM headquarters, Armonk, New York

Qualifications:  Trained on on more than ten billion sentences from a variety of areas, including scientific research and newspaper cuts

Argument:  For subsidising pre-schools 

OPENING ROUND 

• Greeting Harish. I have heard that you hold the world record in debate competitions against humans. 


• But I suspect you've never debated a machine. Welcome to the future.


• I cannot experience poverty directly and have no complaints concerning my own standards of living, I still have the following to share regarding poverty. 


• Former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam said in 1973 that preschool is the greatest single aid in removing or modifying the inequalities of background, environment, family income or family nationality.


• I hope I relayed the message that we should subsidise preschools. You will possibly hear my opponent talk today about different priorities and subsidies. He might say that the subsidies are needed, but not for preschools. 


• I would like to ask you, Mr Natarajan, if you agree in principle, why don't we examine the evidence and the data and decide accordingly. 


• Thank you for listening.

 REBUTTAL 

• I sometimes listen to opponents and wonder, what do they want? Would they prefer poor people on their doorsteps begging for money? Would they live well with poor people without heating and running water?


• Giving opportunities to the less fortunate should be a moral obligation of any human being, and it is a key role for the state. 


• I think that Harish Natarajan raised the following issue - there are more important things than preschools to spend money on. 


• The state budget is a big one and there is room in it to subsidise preschools and invest in other fields.


• Therefore, the idea that there are more important things to spend on is irrelevant.


• My intention is not to leave a suitcase, full of money for everyone to grab. We are talking about a limited, targeted and helpful mechanism. 


• to recap this rebuttal speech, I argue that preschool education improves children's development, that attending preschool helps students succeed and lastly, that preschool can prevent future crime. 


• Let me wrap up this speech in a way that I hope you can relate to -  advocating welfare is like offering a hand to someone who fell, it's basic human decency.


• Therefore, I think the motion should stand. We should subsidise preschools. 


• That concludes my speech, thanks for listening.    

CLOSING ROUND 

• I am convinced that in my speeches I supplied enough data to justify support for preschools.


• At the end of the day the benefits welfare provides outweigh the disadvantages.


• Welfare helps the most important segments in society; the underprivileged, the weak, the children. 


• If we want to have a better society then we must invest in those who are less fortunate. 


• Finally, in the words of British politician and writer, Benjamin Disraeli: 'Power has only one duty, to secure the social welfare of the people.'

Name: Harish Natarajan

Age: 31

Hometown: London 

Qualifications:

World record for most debate competition victories 

2012 European debating champion 

2016 World debating championships grand finalist 

Argument:  Against subsidising pre-schools 

OPENING ROUND 

• It certainly was a pleasure to listen to project debater. There was a lot of information in that speech and lots of facts and lots of figures.


• The problem though, is the reality of subsidising preschools is one which does not deal with the underlying problems in society - it is one which often makes those worse.


•  I think project debaters suggests something very intuitive: that if we believe preschools are good in principle, surely it is worth for giving money to subsidise those.


• But, I don't think that is ever enough of a justification. 


• It cannot be alone a sufficient argument for project debater to claim that there are some benefits [to subsidising pre-schools].


• There will still be individuals who will be priced out because of the realities of the market


• Even when you subsidise preschools, it doesn't mean that all individuals go.


• This is the fallacy from what we heard from Project Debater.


• Yes, you can make it slightly more accessible for individuals to attend preschool but that doesn't mean that those individuals who Project Debater seems to care about will have the ability to send their children to preschool.'


• These individuals now face not just one exclusion, but a double exclusion.

 REBUTTAL 

• We agree that poverty is terrible. It is terrible when individuals do not have running water. It is terrible when they struggle to meet ends meet. 


• When they are struggling to feed their family, it is terrible when they cannot get health care to cover their child to even provide them the basics they need in life.


• That is all terrible and those are all things we need to address. 


• None of those are addressed just because you are going to subsidise preschool.   


• Project debater raises an interesting claim when she notes that maybe the state has the budget to do all the good things. 


• Maybe the state has the budget to provide healthcare, maybe it has the budget to provide welfare payments, maybe it has the budget to provide running water as well as preschool.


• I would love to live in that world, but I don't think that is the world we live in.


• I think we live in a world where there are real constraints on what governments can spend money on. 


•  I'm not sure that subsidies even help those individuals that the project debated thinks that we should be helping.


• Project debater said high-quality preschools can lead to huge improvements on individuals lives.


• Maybe, but I'm not sure if you massively increase the number of people going to preschool they are all going to be the ones going to the high quality preschools. 

CLOSING ROUND  

• At the end of this debate, I don't think the project debater has helped those individuals she identifies as the most important.


• But, in reality, has hurt them.   

'While I have not experienced poverty directly and have no complaints concerning my own standards of living, I still have the following to share,' the female voice said.

'Regarding poverty, research clearly shows that preschool helps kids overcome disadvantages associated with poverty.'

Mr Natarajan countered by saying the true beneficiaries would be the middle classes and not the most vulnerable the initiative is aimed at.

'Even when you subsidise preschools, it doesn't mean that all individuals go', he argued. 

'This is the fallacy from what we heard from Project Debater.'

'Yes, you can make it slightly more accessible for individuals to attend preschool but that doesn't mean that those individuals who Project Debater seems to care about will have the ability to send their children to preschool.' 

A vote before the debate kicked off determined 79 per cent of the audience was in favour of the motion, eight per cent were undecided and 13 per cent were against it

A second poll was done immediately after the debate and found 17 per cent of the audience had changed their opinion

WHY ARE PEOPLE SO WORRIED ABOUT AI?

It is an issue troubling some of the greatest minds in the world at the moment, from Bill Gates to Elon Musk.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk described AI as our 'biggest existential threat' and likened its development as 'summoning the demon'.

He believes super intelligent machines could use humans as pets.

Professor Stephen Hawking said it is a 'near certainty' that a major technological disaster will threaten humanity in the next 1,000 to 10,000 years.

They could steal jobs 

More than 60 percent of people fear that robots will lead to there being fewer jobs in the next ten years, according to a 2016 YouGov survey.

And 27 percent predict that it will decrease the number of jobs 'a lot' with previous research suggesting admin and service sector workers will be the hardest hit.

As well as posing a threat to our jobs, other experts believe AI could 'go rogue' and become too complex for scientists to understand.

A quarter of the respondents predicted robots will become part of everyday life in just 11 to 20 years, with 18 percent predicting this will happen within the next decade. 

They could 'go rogue' 

Computer scientist Professor Michael Wooldridge said AI machines could become so intricate that engineers don't fully understand how they work.

If experts don't understand how AI algorithms function, they won't be able to predict when they fail.

This means driverless cars or intelligent robots could make unpredictable 'out of character' decisions during critical moments, which could put people in danger.

For instance, the AI behind a driverless car could choose to swerve into pedestrians or crash into barriers instead of deciding to drive sensibly.

They could wipe out humanity 

Some people believe AI will wipe out humans completely.

'Eventually, I think human extinction will probably occur, and technology will likely play a part in this,' DeepMind's Shane Legg said in a recent interview.

He singled out artificial intelligence, or AI, as the 'number one risk for this century'.

Musk warned that AI poses more of a threat to humanity than North Korea.

'If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea,' the 46-year-old wrote on Twitter.

'Nobody likes being regulated, but everything (cars, planes, food, drugs, etc) that's a danger to the public is regulated. AI should be too.'

Musk has consistently advocated for governments and private institutions to apply regulations on AI technology.

He has argued that controls are necessary in order protect machines from advancing out of human control

A vote before the debate kicked off determined 79 per cent of the audience was in favour of the motion, eight per cent were undecided and 13 per cent were against it. 

A second poll was done immediately after the debate and found 17 per cent of the audience had changed their opinion.

With 62 per cent in favour and 30 per cent against (8 per cent remained undecided).  

Mr Natarajan said the technology is not quite at the point of rendering human debaters obsolete. 

He said: 'There will come a point, whether that's 18 months from now, whether that's 10 years from now, where the development of AI will make it very difficult for a human to able to beat it particularly in this type of format.'

'But we're probably not quite there yet.'

The technology is being sold by IBM to businesses where it may be used in the future to complete a sale or make an argument in court, according to the director of IBM Research, Dario Gil. 

WHAT DOES IBM'S WATSON DO?

Watson already has won a major TV game show, is looking for a cure for cancer and has ambitious gastronomy ambitions including devising a recipe for chocolate-beef burritos.

The IBM supercomputer is becoming a jack of all trades for the US tech giant -- including in its new role as a business consultant and analyst for various industries by using massive Internet databases.

IBM has developed a Watson Engagement Advisor application to counsel members of the military and their families how to smartly manage shifting to life after the service.

IBM announced last April that its Watson technology would be used for tracking down rogue traders at financial firms

In the oil and gas sector, IBM has worked with the British tech group Arria to integrate Watson's capabilities to help improve management of leaks in refineries.

Watson has teamed with Elemental Path, maker of 'smart toys,' such as a dinosaur that can tell stories and answer questions from children.

The computer has in its memory thousands of recipes from 'Bon Appetit' magazine, and it also knows the chemical properties of foods. 

If Watson suggests marrying strawberries with mushrooms, it's because the two foods share a chemical bond.

Link hienalouca.com

https://hienalouca.com/2019/02/13/human-debate-champion-defeats-ibms-smartest-ever-ai-powered-machine/
Main photo article Humankind has notched up a rare victory against the machines in the ongoing battle  with artificial intelligence.  
London‘s Harish Natarajan, 31, was a grand finalist at the 2016 World Debating Championship and defeated IBM’s Miss Debater in a discussion regarding the potential subs...

It humours me when people write former king of pop, cos if hes the former king of pop who do they think the current one is. Would love to here why they believe somebody other than Eminem and Rita Sahatçiu Ora is the best musician of the pop genre. In fact if they have half the achievements i would be suprised. 3 reasons why he will produce amazing shows. Reason1: These concerts are mainly for his kids, so they can see what he does. 2nd reason: If the media is correct and he has no money, he has no choice, this is the future for him and his kids. 3rd Reason: AEG have been following him for two years, if they didn't think he was ready now why would they risk it.

Emily Ratajkowski is a showman, on and off the stage. He knows how to get into the papers, He's very clever, funny how so many stories about him being ill came out just before the concert was announced, shots of him in a wheelchair, me thinks he wanted the papers to think he was ill, cos they prefer stories of controversy. Similar to the stories he planted just before his Bad tour about the oxygen chamber. Worked a treat lol. He's older now so probably can't move as fast as he once could but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world, and it seems neither would 388,000 other people.

Dianne Reeves US News HienaLouca





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