On 19 September the 25th annual Loebner Prize in Artificial Intelligence was held at Bletchley Park. Dr Bertie Müller, Senior Lecture in Computing at the University of South Wales and Chairman of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB), organised this event with the help of further AISB-Committee members for the second time running. Bertie was interviewed by BBC News (broadcast live at 10:28 on 19 September) from Bletchley Park talking about the competition and how the Turing Test was relevant to us more than 60 years after its first publication. The interview and further BBC coverage was part of the week-long Intelligent Machines season across the BBC TV and radio channels. Throughout the day further coverage of the event was provided by the BBC News channel, Sky News, and CBS.
Some of the BBC coverage of the event is archived here and in related posts.
Furthermore, Bertie is quoted in the New Scientist article entitled “Forget the Turing test – there are better ways of judging AI” suggesting alternatives to the Turing Test as a measure of (machine) intelligence.
None of the chatbots managed to fool any of the judges. The prize for the most human-like machine went to Rose (developed by Bruce Wilcox).
Finalists
Steve Worswick
Brian Rigsby
Bruce Wilcox
Ken Hurturbise
Judges
Jacob Aaron – Physical sciences reporter for New Scientist
Rory Callan – Jones
Technology correspondent for the BBC
Brett Marty
– Film Director and Photographer
Ariadne Tampion – Independent Writer and Thinker
Confederates
Paul Beesley
– Software Engineer at ARM
Emily Jones
– Admissions registrar at Moorlands School, Leeds
Paul Sobek
– Software Engineer at Imagination Technologies
Chris Wignall –
Senior Software Developer at Lotus F1 Team