IBM’s Watson, fresh off victories on Jeopardy!, and successfully diagnosing diseases, is now training for a skill that hits rather close to home–being able to debate and form legal arguments:

And now Big Blue has taken Watson technology one step further with a system that can form logical arguments for or against a complex issue–rather than just answering questions–once it absorbs relevant information.
At the Milken Institute’s annual conference in Beverly Hills, John Kelly III, IBM’s director of research, unveiled an artificial intelligence project called the Debater that has new capabilities to think—and argue– like a human. In a demonstration, Kelly asked the Debater to provide arguments for and against this statement: The sale of violent videogames to minors should be banned. The contraption scanned 4 million Wikipedia articles and narrowed them down to a handful that seemed most relevant. Then, in a synthesized voice, it spit out answers.
Among the reasons to support a ban: “Exposure to violent videogames can cause adolescents to commit acts of aggression in real life,” the Debater explained. ”On the other hand,” it went on, “the sale of violent videogames to minors has not been causally linked with aggressive tendencies.” Doing the research and rattling off several statements, pro and con, took about 45 seconds.

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Tags: John Kelly III, Logical Arguments, violent videogames