[FRIAM] AI and argument

[Marcus Daniels]

Ha.  I can imagine putting candidates in booths.   The computer could parse the outputs and decide whether to repeat them to the audience.  Bzzt.   Rhetoric.  Bzzt.   False statements.  Bzzt.  Ad hominem.    Bing.   Extended neutral elaboration [by the computer].   Keeping people talking, that’s all fine and good.   But how to shut them up with they go off the rails?

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Nick Thompson
Sent: Tuesday, October 3, 2017 11:42 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <friam at redfish.com>
Cc: 'Jon Zingale' <jonzingale at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] AI and argument


Glen ‘n all,



The article relates to a project I dreamed of ... helping people who disagree have a fair argument.  In my notion, a team of philosophy students, masquerading as a program, directed discussants toward fair argument with a view, perhaps, ultimately, in my dreams, teaching a program to step in for the students.



But keeping people talking is not the problem. Therapy programs have been good at it for years.  And three-year-olds.   The three year old has mastered the fact that conversation has both a procedural and a content dimension and the procedural dimension is sufficient to maintain a conversation with a sufficiently naïve adult.  As soon as the adult masters the same fact, the conversation ends immediately.



Why?



Because!



Why?



Because!



No child I have ever known is dumb enough to carry on such a conversation.



Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/



-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of g??? ?
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2017 11:04 AM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com<mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
Subject: [FRIAM] AI and argument



The computers being trained to beat you in an argument

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41010848



> At the University of Dundee we have recently even been using 2,000-year-old theories of rhetoric as a way of spotting the structures of real-life arguments.





--

☣ gⅼеɳ



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