“Part of me thought that debating is an incredible challenge for AI, and that I should be able to beat it,” says Harish, as we discuss his pre-debate nerves.

“But another part of me thought surely before the game of chess against Deep Blue every single grand master would have said a chess machine cannot compete with Gary Kasparov.”

Harish is about to take on the intimidating IBM Project Debater machine, a project that’s long been in the making. The machine has an intimate understanding of him – in fact, it has modelled his voice from hours of recordings. But, aside from a brief glimpse in rehearsal the previous day, Harish’s first interaction with the machine will be on stage in front of a live audience and many expectant online viewers.

“They didn’t want me seeing it or interacting with it before. The first time I’d seen the machine in any form was the rehearsal the day before the main debate. Even then I didn’t see it debate, I just heard it’s voice and saw the way it looked. So there was some degree of trepidation on the day of the debate itself,” he explains.

Some degree of trepidation seems like an understatement to me, but I’m not a world-renowned debating champion with an undergraduate degree from Oxford and a postgraduate degree from Cambridge. Nor do I have the title of Winner of the European Debating Championship, or Grand Finalist in the World Universities Debating Championships under my belt.

If anyone is feeling trepidation in this interview, it is me.