Blog: UK University Holds Artificial Intelligence Test

UK University Holds Artificial Intelligence Test
Associated Press (10/13/08) Satter, Raphael G.
The University of Reading recently conducted its annual Turing Test of artificial intelligence. Dozens of volunteers at split-screen terminals carried out two conversations simultaneously, one with a chat program and one with a human. After five minutes, the volunteers were asked to identify the human and the machine. The chatbot Elbot was declared the winner for fooling three out of the 12 judges assigned to evaluate the program's conversational skills, earning the Loebner Artificial Intelligence Prize's bronze medal. The contest is based on the ideas of British mathematician Alan Turing, who in 1950 argued that conversation was proof of intelligence, and if a computer talked like a human, then for all practical purposes it thought like a human. Each of the programs approached the Turing Test in slightly different ways. One program often referenced its native Odessa and "Aunt Sonya in America." Another used humor to try to fool the judges. Elbot tried to throw the judges off by humorously admitting it was a machine, saying it accidentally poured milk on its cereal instead of oil, and by trying to dominate the conversation to keep it from wandering into areas it was not properly programmed to handle. Elbot's bronze medal is awarded to the software that best mimics human conversation in text form. So far, no silver or gold medals have been awarded. A silver medal would go to a machine that could pass a longer version of the Turing Test and fool at least half the judges, and a gold medal would be awarded to a machine that could process audio and visual information in addition to text.

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