Online Webinar - Project Debater: How Persuasive Can A Computer Be?

In this presentation, Noam Slonim will talk about Project Debater and how persuasive a computer can be. Project Debater is the first AI system that can meaningfully debate a human opponent. The system, an IBM Grand Challenge, is designed to build coherent, convincing speeches on its own, as well as provide rebuttals to the opponent's main arguments.

In 2019, Project Debater competed against Harish Natarajan, who holds the world record for most debate victories, in an event held in San Francisco that was broadcasted live world-wide. In this talk Slonim will tell the story of Project Debater, from conception to a climactic final event, describe its underlying technology, and discuss how it can be leveraged for advancing decision making and critical thinking.

Noam Slonim is a Distinguished Engineer at IBM Research AI. He received his doctorate from the Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation at the Hebrew University and held a post-doc position at the Genomics Institute at Princeton University. Noam joined the IBM Haifa Research Lab in 2007, and in 2011 he proposed to develop Project Debater. He has been serving as the Principal Investigator of the project since then.

Please register below and a Zoom link will be sent in your confirmation and reminder emails. If you do not receive the link, check your spam folder or contact lalambton@ridgefieldlibrary.org.

Please note that this program was originally scheduled to start at 10 AM. The correct time is now 12 noon.