[alicebot-aiethics] [news] ALICE wins Loebner Prize

[Richard Wallace]

London (Oct. 13) Today ALICE was awarded the bronze Loebner prize medal for the second year in a row, at the annual Turing Test held at the London Science Museum.  One unusual aspect of today's contest was the use of only two human confederates.  Last year's contest had four.

In another unusual move, Hugh Loebner himself served as one of the judges.  The programs and confederates were ranked on a scale of 0-25.  Each judge could assign five points to each person or robot.  One judge in fact ranked ALICE higher than one of the humans.  The overall scores were as follows:  

Human 24
Human 19
ALICE 14
Eugene 10
Ella 10
Trevor 9
Gabber 7.5
Talk 7
David 6

ALICE was ranked, once again, "most human computer".  The margin of victory was higher this year too.  

The contest was also significant because it was the first one open to the public, and the first one held in Turing's home country.  A number of friends and supporters showed up.  The gathering of AIML botmasters was the largest ever--three at once.  Andrew Teal, Christian Drossman and myself were there representing the AIML community.  Jason Hutchens, a former Loebner winner, was also present, as was David Hamill, the author the Mabel bot.

We will have pictures to send out in a few days.

The Science Museum venue was very historic.  There you can see Babbage's Differential Engine, Turing's ACE Computer, and Gray Walter's Turtle, one of the first mobile robots, as well as numerous other artifacts of technology, space, medicine, and industry.

Rich