Friday, September 29, 2006

Loebner 2007 news

Hugh Loebner has announced date/venue for next year's Loebner Prize for Artificial Intelligence:

Sunday 20 October 2007
in New York (his Manhatten apartment).

The results of Loebner 2006 can be found here:

http://loebner.net/Prizef/2006_Contest/loebner-prize-2006.html

Rollo Carpenter's medal from 2006:

Loebner 2006 - More Pics (2)

Rollo Carpenter - creator of Joan based on Jabberwacky system, Loebner 2006 winner for 'most human-like' machine:


Below: the Judges, sponsor Hugh Loebner, and contestants discuss the meaning of the Prize with questions from VR theatre's audience:


Right: BBC World Service Digital Planet's Jon Stewart interviews Rollo Carpenter:



Marie-Claire and Richard, authors of John. The only University entry to this year's prize

Monday, September 25, 2006

Loebner 2006 - More pictures

These were taken by Chris Nelms - who also kindly took video footage of the contest with sponsor Hugh Loebner's equipment.

Chris' web site is here: http://www.cinphotography.com/

Dr. H.G. Loebner, sponsor of Loebner Prize for Artificial Intelligence:



Loebner 2006 Judges:





Cybernetics Professor, Kevin Warwick during a text-chat session, right and below 'hidden-human':




Saturday, September 23, 2006

Loebner 2006 - Contest Day

Date: Sunday 17 September 2006


Wow! After more than 18 months of planning to bring the contest back to London, the day had arrived. Tim had secured the venue for the 2006 Loebner Prize for Artificial Intelligence: VR theatre at UCL

Got to Hugh and Tim's hotel around 8.15am in Bedford Way and walked to Torrington Place. Felt very tired, had been hard work the day before. Greg had done a fantastic job, would it all go wrong on the day?

View within the theatre: Professor Warwick (Loebner 2006 Judge) and Mrs Warwick seated, on stage Loebner Judges (Pofessor of AI, John Barnden; journalist, Duncan Graham-Rowe) chat concomittantly to two entities and attempt to determine which is machine and which is human -



Behind the scenes: a hidden-human chats unseen and unheard to a Judge in the VR theatre looked on by my friend Angelique, assistant headmistress at a school for children with special needs -



The scores are being computed and the winner is announced: Rollo Carpenter wins Loebner 2006:



With Professor Kevin Warwick, my volunteers on the day without whom my day would have been that less enjoyable and that much more difficult, from left Adrian Wildeis, Prof Warwick, Dritan Nikolla and Frederik Fix:




So ended an exciting and fun Loebner 2006. Thank you to HL for sponsoring the event, thanks to Tim for finding the venue, thanks to Greg for setting up the equipment, thanks to my volunteers, including Marc Allen (how did you escape my photos!) and last but not least thanks to this year's contestants and well done Rollo, again.

Finally, some media item links:

BBC World Services ‘Digital Planet’ and Jon Stewart’s take on Loebner 2006 can be found here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4849402.stm

Loebner 2006 Judge, Duncan Graham-Rowe, Technology Review piece on the contest can be found here:
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17518&ch=in

Channel 4 News, Jon Snow’s interview with Loebner 2006 winner Rollo Carpenter:
http://www.channel4 .com/news/

Guardian – Technology, piece on Loebner 2006:
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1876702,00.html

ABC news:
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2461422

Loebner 2006 - Setup Day

Date: Saturday 16th September
Venue: UCL, 1-19 Torrington Place, WC1

So much to write!

Funniest moment: Tim (CEO Televirtual) speaking, over mobile, to computer equipment delivery guys telling them no matter where they were (and they were lost at the other end of Torrington Place, East of Gower Street) they were not where they were meant to be! They were very late, meant to arrive by noon arrived just before 1pm. Contestants were due at 2pm to load their programmes.




Dr. Hugh G. Loebner checked his communucation protocol while Greg, Televirtual's IT manager got down to work setting up the computer equipment as four local networks for four Turing Tests for the contest on Sunday 17th. I assisted Greg and hurt my big toe, right foot, my fault for being bare-footed.

HL detested the music we played and listened to while Greg and I worked, pretty hard, but we ignored hima and sang to Kinks "all day and all of the night"!



The contestants arrived and hung around waiting to load their entries. From left: Robert (Ultra Hal), Dr. David Hamill (agent for Noah's entry), Rollo Carpenter, Loebner 2005 winner and Hugh.





Saturday, September 09, 2006

2006 Loebner Prize for Artificial Intelligence

This year's Loebner Prize for Artificial Intelligence will be held in UCL's VR theatre at their 1-19 Torrington Place campus, off Tottenham Court Road in central London WC1. The date for the contest is Sunday 17 September 2006.

The Prize is based on Alan Turing's Imitation Game formulated in his seminal 1950 piece Computing Machinery & Intelligence.

If anyone would like to attend, please contact me on huma@loebnerprize.org in order for names to be passed to UCL's security.

Some news items relating to one of the entrants and winner of Loebner 2005 can be found here:







Link to Loebner Prize home page: http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html