Project Debater was IBM’s AI system that debated a human champion publicly in San Francisco in 2019.
The demonstration took place on 11 February 2019 at IBM’s headquarters in San Francisco. Project Debater argued against Harish Natarajan, a grand-final winner of the World Schools Debating Championships. The motion concerned whether preschool education should receive greater public funding.
Unlike a quiz system that retrieves a short answer, Project Debater was designed to construct spoken arguments. It used techniques for collecting relevant information, identifying claims, organizing evidence, generating arguments, and analyzing an opponent’s position. The event was a research demonstration rather than a formal test of whether AI had surpassed human reasoning.
IBM’s Watson system had earlier become famous through the television quiz show Jeopardy!, but Watson and Project Debater were different projects. Project Debater was developed by IBM Research and focused specifically on persuasive argumentation and debate.