International Business Machines (IBM) fell short in its latest attempt to prove machines can triumph over man. But it came close.
The tech giant’s six-year-old artificial intelligence debating system, affectionately dubbed “Miss Debater,” went head-to-head with one of the world’s most decorated practitioners on Monday. After a 25-minute rapid-fire exchange about pre-school subsidies — during which the female-voiced AI showed flashes of very homo sapien humour — the audience handed the victory to 31-year-old Harish Natarajan.
The unorthodox contest marked the latest highly marketed man-versus-machine challenge. In 1996, IBM created a computer system that beat a chess grandmaster for the
The tech giant’s six-year-old artificial intelligence debating system, affectionately dubbed “Miss Debater,” went head-to-head with one of the world’s most decorated practitioners on Monday. After a 25-minute rapid-fire exchange about pre-school subsidies — during which the female-voiced AI showed flashes of very homo sapien humour — the audience handed the victory to 31-year-old Harish Natarajan.
The unorthodox contest marked the latest highly marketed man-versus-machine challenge. In 1996, IBM created a computer system that beat a chess grandmaster for the

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