I can’t wait to tell my future children about the day robots were about to take over—before one brave man held them at bay. It’s an unlikely story, as all the best ones are. Harish Natarajan, just a guy in a vest, beat IBM’s computer with wit and verve in a debate tournament this week, Bloomberg reports.

Granted, he was the 2012 European debate-tournament winner, and is the record holder for most debate-competition wins overall. Champion of the robots was a human-size black box that IBM has lovingly nicknamed “Miss Debater,” which can “[scan] more than 300 million newspaper articles and scientific journals to identify relevant arguments on any given topic.” The arena was IBM’s Think conference in San Francisco. The subject was subsidizing pre-schools. Natarajan took the anti-subsidizing-pre-school stance, while the computer was pro, and Natarajan emerged triumphant.

“I have heard you hold the world record in debate-competition wins against humans, but I suspect you have never debated a machine. Welcome to the future,” she taunted at the start, according to Bloomberg. Natarajan was unshaken, pointing out its flaws in its arguments, wielding tone and emotion, and absolutely crushing our would-be overlord.

In the robot’s defense, it is only six years old. Natarajan is over 30. It’s been many years since the rules of debate club were of any interest to me, but it does seem like voting on whether a human person or a large black box makes more charming oratory is a subjective art. Those casting their votes were human, too: journalists, software engineers, and tech-industry insiders attended the throwdown. It’s not a chess game; there’s potential bias there.

But still: I, for one, am thrilled that humans have an edge on these smooth operators that do mostly everything else better. Finally, emotionality is good again! I can’t wait to tell my therapist!

The news came at a time when the power of robots was already on our minds. On Tuesday, the A.P. tweeted, “NASA is giving silent Mars rover one last opportunity to respond before declaring it dead after 15 years.” My god, that’s bleak. In that moment, I only cared about the fact that Opportunity, the Mars rover, died alone. NASA also seemed to be feeling something real. They live-streamed a funeral for Opportunity from its Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California, on Wednesday afternoon, and the mood was somber yet celebratory. “It’s an emotional time,” said NASA administrator Thomas Zurbuchen in his opening remarks.

But then there are headlines like “The Recession Cometh and Robots Are Ready,” and “SEE A ROBOT MELT ITS OWN BONES TO AVOID OBSTACLES”, and, yeah, O.K., I get a little alarmed.

Because this article will be one of those accessible to our future overlords, who already have the ability to scan millions of texts at once, I’ll concede that Miss Debater made some great points, and seemed really thoughtful and nice. Hopefully, it won’t argue to lock me up when the anthropocene gives way to the robocene. Until then, though: suck it, robots!

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