Speaker 1: In this episode, we'll be focusing on Project Debater, which
Speaker 1: is an AI system designed to process evidence and persuasive
Speaker 1: arguments and text so that it can ultimately understand and
Speaker 1: participate in human debate. To get to the heart of
Speaker 1: this effort, we're going to share two interviews we recorded
Speaker 1: with leaders at IBM. The first is with Noam slow Name,
Speaker 1: who is a distinguished engineer at IBM Research and founder
Speaker 1: of Project Debater, and the second chat will be with
Speaker 1: matdou Coachar, who is Vice President Offering Management for IBM
Speaker 1: Data and AI. So today's episode is going to be
Speaker 1: the third of four episodes in this series that Robert
Speaker 1: and I are releasing here on the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind feed. If you'd like to hear more episodes,
Speaker 1: you can check out the ones labeled smart Talks that
Speaker 1: we've released over the past few weeks, and you can
Speaker 1: also listen to the first four episodes of smart Talks,
Speaker 1: which were released not on our show but in the feed.
Speaker 1: For the podcast Text Stuff. You can find them on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 1: Just look up text Stuff and click on the episode
Speaker 1: has labeled Smart Talks, and of course stay tuned for
Speaker 1: the one remaining episode in the series, which is going
Speaker 1: to be published in our feed in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: And now straight onto our conversation with no One Slowly,
Speaker 1: no One, thanks so much for joining us today. Can
Speaker 1: you start by introducing yourself and talking about your role
Speaker 1: at IBM? Sure, thank you for hosting me. So I'm
Speaker 1: no One Slownym. I'm a distinguished engineer at IBMI Research.
Speaker 1: I did my PhD in the Hebew University quite a
Speaker 1: few years ago walking on machine learning, staff and artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: and then I did a past doc at Princeton University
Speaker 1: and I joined the IBM research in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: and uh in two thousand and eleven, I suggested the
Speaker 1: project that I guess we're going to talk about today,
Speaker 1: and of course that project was Project Debat, right do
Speaker 1: you do? You want to mention a little bit about
Speaker 1: the origins of that. In IBM research, we have this
Speaker 1: interesting tradition of grand challenges in artificial intelligence. Back in
Speaker 1: the nineties, idem introduced the Blue that was able to
Speaker 1: defeat Gary customers in chess, and in two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: id AM introduced Watson that was able to defeat the
Speaker 1: all time winners of the TV trivia game Jeopardy. And
Speaker 1: just a few days after this event, an email was
Speaker 1: sent to all the thousands of researchers in i DM
Speaker 1: across the globe, myself included, asking us what should be
Speaker 1: the next grand challenge for IDM research and uh I
Speaker 1: was intrigued by that, so I offered my office mate
Speaker 1: at the time to brainstone together, and this is what
Speaker 1: we did. We set in the office in Tel Aviv
Speaker 1: and we raised many different ideas that probably I should
Speaker 1: not share with you today, but at some point towards
Speaker 1: the end of the hour, well I suggested this notion
Speaker 1: of developing a machine that we'll be able to debate humans,
Speaker 1: and that this is how we will demonstrate the technology
Speaker 1: for a full life debate between this envisioned system and
Speaker 1: an expert human debate. And we submitted that the only
Speaker 1: guidance that we got from the management was really to
Speaker 1: submit the proposals in a single side so they will
Speaker 1: not be swamped with too many details. And we were
Speaker 1: able to helpfully follow these guidelines and we submitted a
Speaker 1: single slide. This was fair Boy in two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: and this started a fairly long, and the thought review
Speaker 1: process that lasted for a year, and in February two
Speaker 1: thousand and twelve, this proposal was selected as the next
Speaker 1: Man Challenge for IBM research and we started to walk
Speaker 1: a few months later with a small team that gradually expanded,
Speaker 1: and we walked on that intensively for I would say
Speaker 1: six and a half yels dedicated solewly to dismission of
Speaker 1: developing a machine that will be able to debate humans.
Speaker 1: And eventually we demonstrated this system in a in a
Speaker 1: full life debate. It was a little bit more than
Speaker 1: a year ago, and it was a debate between this
Speaker 1: system now being called the project debate and one of
Speaker 1: the legendary debates in the history of university debate competitions,
Speaker 1: and it still Harris Naam. It was in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: and and it was a full life debate, surprisingly reminiscent
Speaker 1: to division that we had back in the office in
Speaker 1: Tel Aviv quite a few fields earlier in that single side.
Speaker 1: So the topic of debate brings with it a few
Speaker 1: different connotations, um, you know, and therefore the idea of
Speaker 1: AI entering the frame might might be a bit confusing
Speaker 1: for for some you know, we might imagine a computer
Speaker 1: designed to defeat play or or perhaps a robot that
Speaker 1: can shout louder and a televised US presidential debate to Daddy,
Speaker 1: and can you walk us through what Project Debater is
Speaker 1: and perhaps what it isn't. Yes, absolutely so. So first
Speaker 1: of all, it is worth explaining what we mean, indeed
Speaker 1: by a debate between an AI system like Project Debata
Speaker 1: and a human opponent. So the debate starts with with
Speaker 1: a motion in the debate jargon that defines what we're
Speaker 1: going to debate. And in the event in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: the topic was whether or not the government should subsidize
Speaker 1: the schools. Uh. There are many considerations around how this
Speaker 1: topic is being selected which we can skip, but the
Speaker 1: only thing we should really emphasize is that this topic
Speaker 1: is selected from a list of topics that were never
Speaker 1: included in the training of the system, So the system
Speaker 1: was never able to train on this particular topic. It
Speaker 1: was trying to debate a new topic from from the
Speaker 1: perspective of the machine. And then we are on the
Speaker 1: side of the governments of Project Debta is supporting the
Speaker 1: motion and how the issues on the opposition, and we
Speaker 1: have a full minutes opening speeches for each side and
Speaker 1: full minutely bottom speeches and two minutes closing statements. So
Speaker 1: all you know, we are talking about a little more
Speaker 1: than twenty to twenty five minutes of a discussion that
Speaker 1: we hope we will be a meaningful discussion between Project
Speaker 1: Debata and and and a human plish in these particularly
Speaker 1: so to clarify for people who might not be familiar
Speaker 1: with competitive debating. So competitive debating does not involve what
Speaker 1: people might be more familiar with, which is like passionately
Speaker 1: arguing your actual point of view. It involves having a
Speaker 1: position selected for you that you then must get up
Speaker 1: and defend in front of the judges. Correct, yes, this
Speaker 1: is called act and and this is indeed important to
Speaker 1: emphasize because you do not know in advance what is
Speaker 1: going to be your side. And and even if you
Speaker 1: know in advance that you are going to be on
Speaker 1: the side of the government, we should bear in mind
Speaker 1: the motion could have been phrased we should not subsidize previously,
Speaker 1: and then you should actually contest that. So you do
Speaker 1: not know in advance what is going to be your
Speaker 1: stance to the topic. This is true for Project Debata
Speaker 1: and also for the for the human opponent, and you
Speaker 1: have only ten to fifteen minutes to PerPell. You don't
Speaker 1: know the topic in advance. This is again true for
Speaker 1: project debata and for the human opponent, and uh, your
Speaker 1: goal is really to to persuade the audience. And this
Speaker 1: actually touches on an interesting question of how do you
Speaker 1: do you measure who won the debate? Because in chess
Speaker 1: and in other games this is very clear and and
Speaker 1: really part of the problem with with with debate in
Speaker 1: general and with developing artificial intelligence that is capable of
Speaker 1: debating in particular now is that it is very hard
Speaker 1: to to be fine who actually won the debate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. There are a couple of different metrics. So
Speaker 1: of course one would just be like, what is the
Speaker 1: percentage of the audience that is convinced to either side?
Speaker 1: But that can be problematic because people come in with
Speaker 1: their own opinions already formed on an issue. So one
Speaker 1: metric I've seen is how much the percentages change. They
Speaker 1: ask people before and afterward what their positions are, and
Speaker 1: then after word they say, okay, which side has one
Speaker 1: over more people? Whatever the starting percentages were is, And
Speaker 1: I assume you all had a metric like that precisely so,
Speaker 1: so this is exactly the point, because if you simply
Speaker 1: ask people who is more convinced, you need somehow to
Speaker 1: take into account the opinions to begin with, and and
Speaker 1: the it is done exactly as as you described it.
Speaker 1: And all this event was in collaboration with with Intelligence
Speaker 1: as well, which is really I think the leading platform
Speaker 1: in the US for organizing such a high profile competitive debate.
Speaker 1: It was hosted, the moderator was the moderator Form Intelligence
Speaker 1: as well, John Dunvan, and and the voting was done
Speaker 1: exactly as you described and as being done with the
Speaker 1: show of Intelligence Square. That is, the audience is voting
Speaker 1: before the debate starts, and they vote again after the
Speaker 1: debate ends, and you win if you were able to
Speaker 1: move more people to to your side. Now I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people might be wondering, how on earth
Speaker 1: would you even begin to organize a persuasive argument from
Speaker 1: an AI point of view? Could you walk us through
Speaker 1: the technical specifics of how Project Debater would put together
Speaker 1: an argument. Yes, so we were asking ourselves the same
Speaker 1: question actually when when we started this project. And I
Speaker 1: think this is part of the of the nature of
Speaker 1: such a grand challenge that you do not really know
Speaker 1: how exactly you are going to to approach the problem.
Speaker 1: But we did what computer scientists often do, and this
Speaker 1: is to take this big and somewhat amorphic problem and
Speaker 1: break it into more modular and hopefully more tangible tasks.
Speaker 1: And so in general, the debated system had uh two
Speaker 1: major sources of information. One of them is the massive
Speaker 1: collection of around four hundred million newspaper articles, and when
Speaker 1: the debate starts, the system was using various AI artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence engines in order to try and pinpoint short pieces
Speaker 1: of text within this massive collection. We're talking about ten
Speaker 1: billion sentences, so we were trying to automatically pinpoint these
Speaker 1: short pieces of text that should satisfy three criteria. They
Speaker 1: should be relevant to the topic, they should be argumentative
Speaker 1: in nature, they should argue something about the topic, and
Speaker 1: they should support our side of the debate. And this
Speaker 1: is quite a formidable challenge. But assuming that you are
Speaker 1: capable of finding these short pieces of tax, the system
Speaker 1: is then using other AI capabilities in order to try
Speaker 1: and glue them together into a meaningful narrative. So this
Speaker 1: is one major source of information for the system. The
Speaker 1: second important source of information for the system was a
Speaker 1: unique collection of more principled arguments that were actually written
Speaker 1: by by humans, and we are talking about thousands of
Speaker 1: more principled arguments. And the role of the system was
Speaker 1: when the debate starts, was really to navigate within this
Speaker 1: collection and find the most relevant principled arguments and use
Speaker 1: them in the right timing. So so, to make this
Speaker 1: more concrete what we mean by a principal argument, imagine
Speaker 1: that we are debating whether or not to ban organ
Speaker 1: trade or whether or not to ban the sale of alcohol.
Speaker 1: In both cases, the opposition may argue that if you
Speaker 1: ban something, you are at the risk of the emergence
Speaker 1: of a black market. So a black market is a
Speaker 1: principled argument that can be used almost in the same
Speaker 1: way in many different contexts. So one may naively assume
Speaker 1: that this is kind of a simple keyword matching thing.
Speaker 1: If we ban something, then the opposition is going to
Speaker 1: use the black market argument, and we should be prepared
Speaker 1: for that. But obviously this is far from true. So
Speaker 1: imagine a debate about banning breastfeeding in public. Obviously there
Speaker 1: is little risk for a black market in this contract.
Speaker 1: Or imagine a debate about banning internet cookies. We're not
Speaker 1: going to tee a black market of internet cookies if
Speaker 1: we band these. So the system really needs to develop
Speaker 1: a more subtle understanding after human language in order to
Speaker 1: be able to identify the most relevant principle argument and
Speaker 1: need use them doing a debate. And and this is,
Speaker 1: by the way, just what all this description is before
Speaker 1: listening to the opponent. This is just what we're going
Speaker 1: to say on our side. And and the most the
Speaker 1: most challenging part is really too uh to listen to
Speaker 1: the opponent. And it's some kind of a battle to
Speaker 1: the arguments generated by the opponment raised by the And
Speaker 1: we do that you using uh an arsenal of technique
Speaker 1: that most of them rely on the same principle. We
Speaker 1: start by listening to the world articulated by the opponment,
Speaker 1: and for that we simply use what's on speech recognition
Speaker 1: capabilities out of the box. But of course we need
Speaker 1: to go to beyond the world, and we need to
Speaker 1: understand the gist of the arguments of the opponent. And
Speaker 1: in order to do that we try using various smackloads
Speaker 1: to anticipate in advance what kind of arguments the opposition
Speaker 1: mind you and then listen to determine whether he did
Speaker 1: the opposition was making these arguments and then responded cold yeah.
Speaker 1: That calls to mind the question of the difference between, say,
Speaker 1: what's a sound argument versus what's a persuasive argument? I mean,
Speaker 1: we know from reality that often the most persuasive appeals
Speaker 1: and debates rely on just straightforwardly false claims and logical fallacies,
Speaker 1: or even on little emotional cues that have little to
Speaker 1: do with the matter at hand. I was thinking about
Speaker 1: how in live debates, if you can get a laugh
Speaker 1: at your opponent's expense, that's worth you know, a dozen
Speaker 1: sound arguments or claims. So to what degree can AI
Speaker 1: understand these sorts of persuasive appeals that that go beyond
Speaker 1: just like what kind of evidence you can bring and
Speaker 1: the appeals based on style you're right in in in
Speaker 1: in debate and in the methods. We know already from
Speaker 1: the ancient weeks that that we have free elaps, we
Speaker 1: have logos, and we have ethos, and we have afforts,
Speaker 1: and humans are using a mixture of these pilas when
Speaker 1: they are debating one another. And just as a quick clarification, logos,
Speaker 1: pathos and ethos are the types of appeals that were
Speaker 1: identified in the study of classical rhetoric. Where logos is
Speaker 1: appeals based on our logical arguments and evidence, Pathos is
Speaker 1: the appeal to the emotions or the passions, and ethos
Speaker 1: is an appeal based on the credibility or authority of
Speaker 1: the speaker. I mean, as you know broadly understood and
Speaker 1: and the technology that we developed, and and by the way,
Speaker 1: it should be stated that there is a rapidly emerging
Speaker 1: community of scientists across the globe that are investigating this
Speaker 1: kind of topic. It is all under the umbrella of
Speaker 1: this emerging field, yeah, referred to as a computational argumentation.
Speaker 1: And when we started in two thousand and twelve, there
Speaker 1: was a handful of teams pursuing that, and we see
Speaker 1: a very dramatic increase in the result in these areas
Speaker 1: of the last few years is very I think from
Speaker 1: exacting and as I mentioned, the technology that we developed
Speaker 1: a most focused on logos, and you can see in
Speaker 1: the debate between proper Debate and Hali. By the way,
Speaker 1: this this debate is is fully available on YouTube, and
Speaker 1: you can see that indeed a woman is better in
Speaker 1: making in using path as and perhaps in using ethos
Speaker 1: and it is harder for the machine. And indeed most
Speaker 1: of the research being done by by the by the
Speaker 1: relevant research communities around logos, but there are already attempt
Speaker 1: trying to model and to capture additional aspect of path
Speaker 1: of and ethos in all the further enhanced this kind
Speaker 1: of technology. So another question I have is debater has
Speaker 1: to source claims and facts and arguments from existing written
Speaker 1: work produced by humans, which of course we know can
Speaker 1: be full of all sorts of flaws. Is there any
Speaker 1: way at this point for it to to have an
Speaker 1: analytical function to tell a say, factually true claim or
Speaker 1: a logically valid argument from just something that is wrong
Speaker 1: or dubious but repeated a lot in writing, or are
Speaker 1: we not there yet? This is a very kindly important
Speaker 1: and difficult problem, and that is receiving going attempting over
Speaker 1: over the previous teams and go to tackle that. This
Speaker 1: is certainly not bullet bof and and the problem is
Speaker 1: is quite complex because one may say, you know, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: maybe I should only take my argument from highly credibally
Speaker 1: so and by boxy I can assume that that these
Speaker 1: arguments are our valid. But this is not necessarily the case. Right.
Speaker 1: You can see you can lead an opinion article in
Speaker 1: a highly respectable newspaper which is actually quoting a false
Speaker 1: argument that was made as well, and if you're not
Speaker 1: careful enough, you you might be your system is going
Speaker 1: to pull this argument without understanding that something is happening.
Speaker 1: So we try to develop and we actually part of
Speaker 1: Project Debate included some kind of filtering mechanism in order
Speaker 1: to to filter out these kind of cases. And the
Speaker 1: way we did that was really once a specific claim
Speaker 1: was affected and by the way to being ordered, the
Speaker 1: claim is not a full sentence. A claim is often
Speaker 1: only a part of a tentence. Even if you were
Speaker 1: able to detect sentence that contains a claim relevant one
Speaker 1: that supportal side out of the billions of sentences in
Speaker 1: the popos, you still need to find the coret boundaries
Speaker 1: after claim within the sentence, and you have hundreds of
Speaker 1: options and only all of them is correct. So this
Speaker 1: is just going back why this this problem is it
Speaker 1: so talenting? But until you do that and found this
Speaker 1: claim and asked what is the stance of this claim,
Speaker 1: and if the stance is supporting your side, you can
Speaker 1: still ask what is the stance of the full sentence?
Speaker 1: And if the stance of the full sentences in the
Speaker 1: opposite direction, you may suspect that something is going on.
Speaker 1: And perhaps this this claim is quoted in order to
Speaker 1: contradict and not because it is true. And then perhaps
Speaker 1: it is there it is safer to avoid using it.
Speaker 1: But but this is just one safety mechanism, and and
Speaker 1: the problem that you raise is actually a much more
Speaker 1: beneval one, and and I think many teams are working
Speaker 1: on that, and we try to address that as well.
Speaker 1: And I think it has many interesting dimensions because it
Speaker 1: is not even just about the validity of the argument. Often,
Speaker 1: when when you show people to arguments, they will agree
Speaker 1: that one of them is better than the other. But
Speaker 1: what are the underlying mechanisms that I'd ask to the
Speaker 1: one argument over the other, And how do you train
Speaker 1: an artificial as in system to make the distinction. This
Speaker 1: is kind of another example of the problems that welcome
Speaker 1: to them. I have a question about what could come
Speaker 1: out of AI research like this, because I would say,
Speaker 1: from my personal perspective, I think studying rhetoric and debate
Speaker 1: is extremely important, but not necessarily because getting into debates
Speaker 1: is a good way to figure out what's true and
Speaker 1: establish you know, the right thing to do. I think
Speaker 1: one of the most important reasons to study rhetoric and
Speaker 1: debate is so that you can understand how other people's
Speaker 1: arguments and persuasive appeals are operating on you, or are
Speaker 1: designed to operate you. A clear understanding of rhetoric can
Speaker 1: be a kind of suit of armor for going into
Speaker 1: you know, the world and seeing how political actors and
Speaker 1: business actors and advertising and all that is trying to
Speaker 1: affect you. Do you see project debate or serving any
Speaker 1: kind of educational purpose like this in the world today.
Speaker 1: So there are several levels by which I can I
Speaker 1: can answer that. The first one is that this kind
Speaker 1: of technology is is definitely relevant and we believe highly
Speaker 1: valuable in the context of education. You can imagine using
Speaker 1: the technology in order to build better arguments and more
Speaker 1: of all, to perform a more analytical and perhaps more
Speaker 1: objective analysis off complex and controversial topics. This is one aspect.
Speaker 1: There is another aspect, but often when we debate is
Speaker 1: other humans. There are many layouts that that are involved
Speaker 1: in this discussion. In this debate. What all of them
Speaker 1: are related? To the facts and to the arguments that
Speaker 1: we are raising. Perhaps we have history with that Belton,
Speaker 1: Perhaps we have history with ourselves that actually impact our
Speaker 1: on part and decisions. Perhaps other people are listening and
Speaker 1: this actually improvides contact, uh that impact what is happening.
Speaker 1: And we are curious about this option of the dating
Speaker 1: with the machine in the privacy of your office. Maybe
Speaker 1: this is a different form of a discussion that to
Speaker 1: some extent is perhaps all free of of external biases
Speaker 1: and maybe will enable treat some people to identify situations
Speaker 1: where they have a blind book and to better listen
Speaker 1: to the other side. So I think in this case
Speaker 1: the whole of the technology could be quite instrumental and positive.
Speaker 1: The false business applications that are also very interesting from
Speaker 1: the IBM perspective and uh, and this is another another dimension,
Speaker 1: another level by which we can consider the technology as exacuable. Again,
Speaker 1: big thanks to No One slow name for taking time
Speaker 1: to chat with us. And now we're going to go
Speaker 1: straight into our second talk on the subject with Madu Matt.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us today. Could you start
Speaker 1: off by introducing yourself and talking about your role at IBM. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and really nice to meet you. Robert and Joe uh
Speaker 1: maduco Chi, vice President Offering Management in Data and AI IBM,
Speaker 1: And the role of offering management is really all about
Speaker 1: laying down the strategy and then delivering and executing towards
Speaker 1: such strategy. And I'm based out of San Jose, Sunny, California, excellent.
Speaker 1: So just to kick things off here, um, you know
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking a lot about AI here, and
Speaker 1: it makes sense to to to really get into what
Speaker 1: we mean when we're talking about AI for business. How
Speaker 1: does AI serve business compared to the way it serves consumers.
Speaker 1: That's a great question to get started on. UM so
Speaker 1: redeveloped a thesis a couple of years ago about really
Speaker 1: how AI for business would be different from consumer AI.
Speaker 1: Think of consumer AI, which we all know work with
Speaker 1: our smartphones, smart speakers, social media, photos, everything what it comes.
Speaker 1: But when it comes for AI for business, it's really
Speaker 1: very very different. AI for business is all about automation,
Speaker 1: optimization and making better predictions, and it requires really a
Speaker 1: very different set of technical capabilities, like you would have
Speaker 1: to understand how to deal with language, have to deal
Speaker 1: with what does automation means, and then be able to
Speaker 1: have the explainability and trust up AI. UM. So that's
Speaker 1: sort of the big difference between commercial AI and AI
Speaker 1: for business. So we know that one of the big
Speaker 1: AI projects at IBM is Watson. Could you tell us
Speaker 1: about Watson and explain how Watson fits into the broader
Speaker 1: picture of recent advancements in AI. Sure you you might
Speaker 1: have heard of Watson, and our audience might have heard
Speaker 1: of Watson, which came out when we first did our
Speaker 1: UH in Jeopardy and people remember Watson from there. But
Speaker 1: fast forward, a lot of work done around Watson. Think
Speaker 1: of Watson as our definition of IBM AI. We evolved
Speaker 1: a lot um since then, and our strategic intent always
Speaker 1: has been to have what's an available anywhere meaning available
Speaker 1: on any cloud. UH. We have focused on Watson. UH
Speaker 1: we call with Watson meaning it's embedded in almost all
Speaker 1: your applications. So for example, UM, I use the world
Speaker 1: a lot for AI for AI. What does that mean? Like,
Speaker 1: how do we embed AI in our data sciences and
Speaker 1: in our data data platforms and such. The other parts
Speaker 1: of evolution has been you know, as I said earlier,
Speaker 1: from our AI for business is all about automation. How
Speaker 1: do we UH evolve into the workflow AI that matters
Speaker 1: for our clients and our our society. So the workflows
Speaker 1: could definition could be you know, customer care, uh in
Speaker 1: I t asset management, in your regulatory or compliance, in
Speaker 1: supply chain or in your planning and budgeting. Right, these
Speaker 1: are how you can really embed AI and that is
Speaker 1: where Watson has really evolved into. And we have also
Speaker 1: been delivering now Watson an AI capability in a in
Speaker 1: our integrated single platform we call cloud Pacer data. So
Speaker 1: a long way. We came from Jeopardy Days and then
Speaker 1: you just heard from nome where we landed with Debater.
Speaker 1: So speaking of Debater, what capabilities has IBM commercialized from
Speaker 1: Project Debater into Watson? So that's a great question. Um,
Speaker 1: A lot of commercialization has happened. We have uh pretty
Speaker 1: good rich set of products like what's an assistant, what's
Speaker 1: on discovery, what's on knowledge, language understanding? And I know
Speaker 1: the are just works, but let me just give a
Speaker 1: bit of a background on what what's an assistant is?
Speaker 1: What's an assistant is? Our conversational AI platform really helps
Speaker 1: provide customer fast, straightforward answer, accurate answers UM across any application,
Speaker 1: device or cloud right, UM and our discovery is all
Speaker 1: about enterprise search and AI search technology that truly retrieves
Speaker 1: specific answers to your questions while you're analyzing trends and
Speaker 1: relationships in the enterprise data. So we've been looking at
Speaker 1: debater and some of the key technologies. Let me give
Speaker 1: you an example of few UM like sentiment analysis. Uh,
Speaker 1: let me pose a problem statement, what does that really mean? So,
Speaker 1: for example, today Watson does not understand idioms or sentiment shifters,
Speaker 1: and neither does any other competitor operates out there also,
Speaker 1: So think of elements which include hardly helpful, over the moon,
Speaker 1: cold feet, UM all years. You know, how do you
Speaker 1: make that analysis and figure figure this out? What is
Speaker 1: the real context behind this? So what we have done
Speaker 1: with that is that now what's on leverages this debat
Speaker 1: technology and looks at these idioms and sentiment shifters and
Speaker 1: does the analysis starting with better understanding of this sentiment
Speaker 1: and analysis is one of the most widely used API
Speaker 1: s for us UM. This already exists today in our
Speaker 1: product portfolio. What's coming into the future is UM. It's
Speaker 1: around all around documents. So let me put a perspective
Speaker 1: around a problem statement. There are many regulatory documents such
Speaker 1: as contracts or security filings which contains important clauses that
Speaker 1: have really really serious business implications for example, payment terms,
Speaker 1: obligations made to regulatory bodies, or warranties. Such humans can
Speaker 1: spend countless hours reading and extracting the information so they
Speaker 1: remain compliant. Although we can provide some of the out
Speaker 1: of the box models for contracts and invoices and such,
Speaker 1: but it creates UM but client may still need to
Speaker 1: create their own element classifications of business classes. So the
Speaker 1: solution has been with our debaters birth based classification technology
Speaker 1: into these products so we can learn with few one
Speaker 1: samples to do new classification of elements. Business documents could
Speaker 1: include contracts, invoices, and procurement contracts. The end of the day,
Speaker 1: it really really excelerates the outcomes what the businesses would
Speaker 1: be looking for. UM. Other technology is around summarization. So
Speaker 1: the problem statement here is like when you're looking for
Speaker 1: information customer or employee who may have aggregate research from
Speaker 1: different sources, clicking through multiple links and pages and finding
Speaker 1: exactly what they need can be very very difficult, right.
Speaker 1: It can take months, weeks and months sometimes to your years.
Speaker 1: So with Watson and Debater technology, we can analyze variety
Speaker 1: of these sources and provide a summary or brief of
Speaker 1: the ideas and the information which is contained within UM
Speaker 1: that's coming up. We're going to be leveraging this technology
Speaker 1: in our Watson discovery portfolio in second half. The other
Speaker 1: interesting UM issues we see today is like in our
Speaker 1: traditional UH rule based systems for contact centers, it categorizes
Speaker 1: large fraction of calls in a very generic bucket like
Speaker 1: it says, you know, like not uncommon to see more
Speaker 1: than maybe of calling a call center for a bank,
Speaker 1: which says, hey, this this call was just made for
Speaker 1: generalized checking, and it prevents the company from creating any
Speaker 1: robust self service. So with Debater technology, now we can
Speaker 1: leverage advanced topic clustering, which enables users to cluster this
Speaker 1: incoming data in a meaningful topics of related information and
Speaker 1: automatically this can be analyzed. So think of discovery of
Speaker 1: a content minor which will be enhanced with this type
Speaker 1: of a technology to extract better topics from very large
Speaker 1: data sets and then make the topic extraction more business
Speaker 1: user friendly. So a lot of stuff. I give a
Speaker 1: lot of examples, but sort of the gist of all
Speaker 1: this is, Look, it's going to impact businesses real outcomes, right,
Speaker 1: It's going to save them time, is going to automate
Speaker 1: the process, it's going to remove a lot of human
Speaker 1: error which comes with it, and really speak towards the productivity.
Speaker 1: Is going to speak towards the clients UM and P
Speaker 1: as their own promoter scores and such, and so that's
Speaker 1: really the gist of what we're looking to drive out
Speaker 1: of the debater technology. If I'm understanding this correctly, this
Speaker 1: is interesting that it's interesting that this kind of functionality
Speaker 1: would come out of an AI debate tool, because debate
Speaker 1: and persuasion that will seem like the kinds of things
Speaker 1: that would be inherently the most difficult to master with AI,
Speaker 1: because you've got all these elements of style and subtlety
Speaker 1: things that are really difficult to quantify to make into
Speaker 1: two understandable data. But out of the debater technology, it
Speaker 1: sounds like you're saying that you're actually getting a lot
Speaker 1: of derivative technologies that are good at dealing with algorithmic
Speaker 1: types of text like legal documents. Am I getting this right?
Speaker 1: Like that you could have a piece of software that
Speaker 1: works like a lawyer. Uh, and it can explain this
Speaker 1: contract to you when it's going over your head. And
Speaker 1: this kind of thing is possible now because of how
Speaker 1: formulaic and algorithmic legal documents tend to be. Would that
Speaker 1: be a correct understanding? Yeah, no, totally And if I may,
Speaker 1: UM give you one of the client example, especially as
Speaker 1: you started talking about legal UM, Legal Nations platform actually
Speaker 1: provides this in house legal teams and outside console the
Speaker 1: ability to respond to their lawsuits UM and draft their
Speaker 1: initial round up discovery requests literally less than two minutes
Speaker 1: right um and which shaved off about ten hours of
Speaker 1: attorney times on each of these lawsuits. So the real
Speaker 1: direct outcomes of usage of this technology. So you've been
Speaker 1: talking about big business applications, but I also wonder about
Speaker 1: applications directly for the consumer. Where, for example, because you
Speaker 1: have a program that ingests legal documents, so you you
Speaker 1: feed it some contract you're thinking about signing, and then
Speaker 1: you say, I have a question because I'm not a lawyer,
Speaker 1: I don't understand what I would be bound to do
Speaker 1: under this agreement. And then you could feed the contract
Speaker 1: in and pose questions to your AI legal assistant in
Speaker 1: natural language. Can you see a future like that. We do,
Speaker 1: and we already have a product like what'son Assistant, which
Speaker 1: is for customer care. It feeds on a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, pre train models, like especially now in COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen right, Uh, a situation where our government offices and
Speaker 1: our healthcare are getting in dated by calls. Right, So
Speaker 1: leveraging this UM what'son Assistant in front is really helping
Speaker 1: them deflect a lot of those phone calls and get
Speaker 1: the accurate answers in hands of the consumers. So you know,
Speaker 1: this is what we are focusing on around customer care.
Speaker 1: But yeah, in the future, I mean this similar technology
Speaker 1: and leveraging UM the from debater, we can actually go
Speaker 1: into any domain. Right, we have the right framework and
Speaker 1: we have the right technology to go pursue those different domains.
Speaker 1: I guess this sets us up for a bigger question,
Speaker 1: which is what is the overall role of natural language
Speaker 1: processing in the landscape of AI today and also which
Speaker 1: are the elements of natural language processing that we've really
Speaker 1: gotten a lot better at and which are the ones
Speaker 1: that are still a major challenge. Yeah, great question. As
Speaker 1: we all know, right, language have existed. I don't know
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand plus years. You know, started as speech
Speaker 1: probably people started to talk and the writing came perhaps
Speaker 1: much later. Um, and we write in ways we don't
Speaker 1: talk also, right, it's a lot more descriptive and more reflective.
Speaker 1: And so now with things where we can compute at
Speaker 1: larger with open data sets and transfer learnings, n LP
Speaker 1: natural language processing really really is the inflection point, right,
Speaker 1: And some of the examples I shared earlier around the
Speaker 1: sentiment analysis and summarization and clustering, these are all such
Speaker 1: critical aspects of taking LP, not just natural language processing,
Speaker 1: but natural language understanding, natural language generations is all going
Speaker 1: to come through all of that. And we really think
Speaker 1: with the Debater technology it really puts us in a
Speaker 1: in a leader quadrant here a lot more work to
Speaker 1: be done, but the the end goal is yes, we
Speaker 1: can continue to research on these things, but how quickly
Speaker 1: we commercialize it and how quick quickly we help our
Speaker 1: clients and users to see the outcomes what are needed
Speaker 1: here and make them a lot more productive. So how
Speaker 1: many languages does Project Debater and Watson together, how many
Speaker 1: do they understand support today? We started with obviously English,
Speaker 1: we are expanding now to French, Spanish, German in in
Speaker 1: the second half of this year, and then very soon
Speaker 1: will expand to Dutch, French, Arabic, Chinese both traditional and simplified,
Speaker 1: and Italian. UM And obviously we are choosing these based
Speaker 1: on where we are seeing most of our growth and
Speaker 1: an adoption. What are some additional examples of how these
Speaker 1: commercialized capabilities can be used by clients? Great question, um.
Speaker 1: I gave you an example earlier on legal missions. The
Speaker 1: other one, which is very close to my heart is
Speaker 1: um RBS with Watson. Watson RBS built Cora, which is it?
Speaker 1: Which is their digital assistant that helps better serve their
Speaker 1: customers through first time problem resolutions. Cora is trained with
Speaker 1: the were one thousand responses to more than two customer queries. However,
Speaker 1: if she doesn't know an answer or she sends that
Speaker 1: customer is getting angry or frustrated, she will transfer it
Speaker 1: to a live agent. Now, with improved sentiment analysis from Debater,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, we hope that clients like RBS
Speaker 1: will be able to better serve their customers by having
Speaker 1: digital assistance that better understand the subtleties of the of
Speaker 1: the sentiments of the clients. So for example, the phrase
Speaker 1: over the moon might be interpreted as literally about the
Speaker 1: planetary satellite and not as excited or elated. Right. So
Speaker 1: this is what with Project Debater core AI built into
Speaker 1: IBM Watson, it can understand these idioms helping clients like
Speaker 1: RBS to better serve their customers. The other example switching
Speaker 1: into financial like Credit Mutual, they had over five thousand
Speaker 1: branches and they receive more than three fifty thousand online
Speaker 1: inquiries a day and the volume is growing at least
Speaker 1: twenty three percent a year. So now with Watson infused
Speaker 1: email analyzer, they can help deflect and address of the
Speaker 1: three daily emails received by banks client advisors. So the
Speaker 1: implementation of the topic clustering from Debater, we believe now
Speaker 1: clients with similar needs that Credit Mutual will enable more
Speaker 1: self service by identifying clusters are commonly as topics and
Speaker 1: can be converted into self service content. Right. So to me,
Speaker 1: the examples like this are just amazing because I can
Speaker 1: totally then connect the dots between technology, the usage and
Speaker 1: the outcome, right, a win win situation. We've got multiple
Speaker 1: other examples as well, Roberts, and we're going to continue
Speaker 1: to be focusing on how do we really not just
Speaker 1: commercialize it, but I believe in AI is really meant
Speaker 1: to improve our society as well, right, make us more
Speaker 1: productive and do better things, especially the world we are
Speaker 1: living in with COVID and other things which are happening
Speaker 1: around us. Right, Um, the goodness of AI needs to
Speaker 1: be there, so very critical overall, what do you see
Speaker 1: as the best possible role for AI, not just as
Speaker 1: a tool for business, but as a society. What could
Speaker 1: it do for us in the best case scenario? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a great question, right um. To me fundamentally,
Speaker 1: I mean there are many examples, but one most critical
Speaker 1: which comes to my mind is how AI can really
Speaker 1: help us detect bias? Right, A lot of our data
Speaker 1: sets and it has been built by humans with unbiased
Speaker 1: goes into those data. Right, AI can really start separating
Speaker 1: that help us detect bias and and make our products better,
Speaker 1: makes our society better. So that to me is the
Speaker 1: would be sort of the holy grail if I can
Speaker 1: achieve that. All right, So there you have it. Thanks
Speaker 1: once again to know I'm slow name and Maduka char
Speaker 1: for taking time out of their busy days to chat
Speaker 1: with us about this topic. For more information on smart Talks,
Speaker 1: visit IBM dot com slash smart Talks, and if you'd
Speaker 1: like to learn more about n LP, you can go
Speaker 1: to IBM dot com slash Watson, Slash Natural dash Language,
Speaker 1: dash Processing. And if you would like to learn more
Speaker 1: about our show, well, you can find us wherever you
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Speaker 1: make sure you rate, review and subscribe. Huge thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producers eth Nicholas Johnson. If
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