The debating AI drew 1-1 with the humans Description:Eric Risberg/AP/REX/Shutterstock

It’s a robot that answers back. An almost 2-metre-tall black panel called Project Debater competed in its first public debate against humans this week and put in an admirable performance. The final score was 1–1, according to the audience.

The audience voted that Project Debater’s delivery was worse than the person it was debating, but conveyed more information.

Project Debater, which is built by IBM, spoke with a confident female voice, however it did make some un-human slip-ups. For example, during one sentence the AI mentioned the astronaut Scott Kelly and then said “voiceover”, suggesting that it was borrowing phrases from a video transcript. And the second clause in its sentences didn’t always follow on naturally from the first, for example.


The system has a bank of several hundred million articles that it can draw from, covering around 100 topics. When given a debate question, it takes a few minutes to search through these articles, construct arguments and an overall speech. It cited sources for some of its information.

It also uses speech recognition so that it can analyse its opponents arguments. This takes a few minutes, but Project Debater then attempts to respond directly to points raised.

IBM has spent six years developing the AI and hopes that its ability to identify key claims in a debate and make logical arguments will help it to make more sophisticated digital assistants.

Read more: Computers that can argue will be satnav for the moral maze