IBM's Robot Debater Takes on Humans...and May Change Some Minds
*By: Britt Terrell*
IBM Research conducted the first live debate between a human and a machine this week, showing off the company's latest development in artificial intelligence.
Project Debater squared off against two experts in rhetoric Monday night, responding to and delivering its own arguments. The technology, which ingests information from newspaper articles and other sources to put together well-structured speech and deliver a response, was even able to convince some audience members to change their minds.
"This is a great tool for helping educate the public," said Arvind Krishna, SVP & Director of IBM Research. "They could ask it a question, and 'Debater' can then look through and say, 'Look, based on everything I've read, here is an informed opinion on what everybody's thinking and saying.'"
When it comes to using the machine to help humans formulate opinions, though, especially in an age when fake news has run rampant on certain sites, Debater's powers could raises some concerns. But Krishna pointed out that humans are subject to the same pitfalls.
"What the Debater will do is it won't stick only to the fake news, it will give other \[opinions\], so you really get a complete and comprehensive \[response\]."
Debater is not the first example of high-functioning A.I. to come out of IBM. The company's Watson technology showed off against Jeopardy! champions in 2011, and its 'Deep Blue' program famously bested chess champion Garry Kasparov back in 1997.
But there is still work to be done on the Debater software. And while Krishna dismissed criticisms that its voice was too robotic ー Google, after all, drew jabs for its [all-too-human-sounding Duplex](https://cheddar.com/videos/was-googles-duplex-demo-real) ー he acknowledged some room for improvement.
"How do you throw humor in, when do you throw humor in?" he asked. "Like when it makes a joke like, 'If I had blood, my blood would boil, but I don't really have blood.'"
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/ibms-newest-a-i-project).
Umbilical cord blood banking platform Anja Health raised $4.5 million dollars in a seed round led by Seven Seven Six, a venture capital firm founded by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Anja Health offers a personalized, doctor-backed cord blood bank, which lets new parents freeze stem cells from their child's umbilical cord so they can be used to treat diseases in the future. It's a process Anja has called 'Hollywood's best-kept secret,' as celebrities like Kylie Jenner, Serena Williams, and more have all banked their umbilical cord blood. Kathryn Cross, the founder of Anja Health, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Catching you up on what you missed in today's news. Elon Musk has increased his commitment to purchase Twitter to $33.5 billion, Apple is raising its hourly wages for retail stores to compete for talent, and Roblox has announced that it will be partnering with the medically prescribed video game ‘Endeavor’ to help treat patients with ADHD.
After learning that the suspect in the Uvalde school shooting posted about his intentions on Facebook, activists are urging social networks to make changes. Lena Derhally, a licensed psychotherapist and author of "The Facebook Narcissist," joined Cheddar News to discuss the role social media plays in school shootings. "They're not really invested in taking down hateful content," she said about social platforms."In regards to the shooting, it was 15 minutes before that actual threat. It would be pretty hard for a social media company to trace that threat that quickly. But what they can do better is take down threats and hateful content much faster and more than they're doing now."
Esper Bionics CEO Dima Gazda breaks down how they're creating a mind-controlled bionic hand that guest smarter the more you use it, and what this innovation means for the future of the prosthetics industry.
On this episode of Cheddar Innovates: Brightseed Co-Founder breaks down what plant bioactives are, and how they're using the latest technology to study human's biological connections with plants; Esper Bionics CEO breaks down how they re creating a mind-controlled bionic hand that guest smarter the more you use it; Cheddar gets a look at Curiosity Stream's 'Capturing A Black Hole In Our Milky Way.'
