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Be a part of history – Reading community to test machines 'as' human – University of Reading

On 12 October, the University of Reading is hosting the 18th Loebner Prize for Artificial Intelligence, a prestigious international competition to find a machine capable of successfully passing itself off as human, through text-based conversation.

The University would like to invite local people to volunteer and participate in this exciting science event. Over one hundred preliminary phase judges have already put the 13 original entrants through their paces to whittle them down to the final six Artificial Conversational Entities (ACE). Preliminary phase judges included some pupils from Kendrick Girls School, Reading.

Participants in the finals will simply be asked to chat on-line, typing their conversation using a computer's keyboard in an attempt to ascertain whether they are communicating with a human or a machine. Participation will contribute to finding the best of the six finalists, which will be awarded a bronze medal and $3000 for 'most human-like ACE' at the end of the day.

University of Reading's Professor Kevin Warwick, organiser, and Huma Shah, co-ordinator, of this year's Loebner Prize said: "For the finals on 12 October, we want to raise the bar and really push these machines. Ideally, we would like participants from all walks of life, males and females (aged from ten years upwards), native and non-native speakers of English, both computer novices and those with experience of using chat programmes. These machines in the final are amazingly complex and we want to test whether they can function over a wide range of conversations. But will one of them be good enough to fool you into thinking it is human"?

Karen Perry, who organised the involvement of Kendrick School in the preliminary stages of the competition said: "Kendrick School was pleased to be involved in such an interesting project and the students' experiences were enhanced by having access to the latest technology and being part of current research."

All prospective participants will be asked to complete a short questionnaire giving their age, experience with computers, and first language. To thoroughly test the machines, we require a good spread of ages, backgrounds and technical experience. All successful candidates will be notified in advance. There will be no cost and no prior requirements – just participating on Oct 12th.

To register your interest, please email the co-ordinator: huma@loebnerprize.org

ENDS

Further information from Alex Brannen, Media Relations Manager, University of Reading, on 0118 378 7388

Notes to editors:

The Loebner Prize, an annual contest staging the Turing Test, will this year take place in the Palmer Building on the University of Reading's Whiteknights Campus on Sunday 12 October, from 9am. The winner of the 'most human-like' ACE in the 18th Loebner Prize will be announced at 3.40pm.

The Turing Test involves three participants: a judge, a machine and a human. The judge sits in a separate room from the machine and the other human. The task of the judge is to decide, using only text-based conversation, which is the human and which is the machine. Turing maintained, that if the machine was indistinguishable from the human then it could be said to be 'thinking' and, therefore, there should be no problem in our attributing intelligence to this machine.

In 1990, the Loebner Prize was instigated by Hugh Loebner under the auspices of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies of Massachusetts, USA, with the first competition held in November, 1991. As Loebner describes it, the competition was created to advance the state of AI research, at least in part because while the Turing Test had been discussed for many years, "no one had taken steps to implement it." The Loebner Prize has awards for three levels of proof, including a prize for the best machine to deceive the human interrogators.

Media attendance – to attend on 12 October please call Alex Brannen on 0118 378 7388.