Reading to host Loebner Prize
16 May 2008
This year, the School of Systems Engineering at the University of Reading is hosting the prestigious Loebner Prize for Artificial Intelligence.
The 2008 Prize is the 18th consecutive contest based on 20th century British mathematician and code-breaker Alan Turing's text-based measure for machine intelligence. Turing originally wrote his article 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence,' in the journal Mind in 1950. Little did he know, text-mediated communication, through emails and mobile text messages, would become a major interaction platform between humans across the globe in the 21st century.
Turing devised a Test, an imitation game in which a machine conversationally imitates a human. The Loebner Prize provides an opportunity to play out Turing's Test. 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' in the human sense, and, therefore, there should be no problem in our attributing intelligence to this machine.
The competition, which will take place on Sunday October 12, 2008 in the Palmer building, is sponsored by the American scientist and philanthropist Dr. Hugh Loebner. It has previously been held in the UK: Science Museum London (2001), University of Surrey (2003) and University College London (2006). Though the Loebner Prize has run annually since 1991, no computer, yet, has won the $100,000 (gold prize) for conversation that is indistinguishable from that of a human. However, each year the sponsor, Hugh Loebner, has awarded a bronze medal for 'most human-like' machine in the contest.
Professor Kevin Warwick, the organiser of the 2008 competition, said "hosting the Loebner Prize is a great opportunity for the University of Reading. The competition is all about whether a machine can now pass the Turing Test, a significant milestone in Artificial Intelligence. I believe machines are getting extremely close - it would be tremendously exciting if such a world first occurred in the UK, in Reading University in 2008. This is a real possibility."