Loebner Prize 2006 Information

"The First Turing Test"

The 16th Annual Loebner Prize contest for artificial intelligence was held Sunday, September 17, 2006 at University College London.

Place

Average Rank

Program

Author(s)

1st

3.75

Joan

Rollo Carpenter

2nd

3

Ultra Hal

Robert Medeksza

3rd

2.25

Cletus

Noah Duncan

4th

1

John

R. Churchill & M-C Jenkins

Acknowledgements: 

The 2006 Competition could not have occurred without the assistance of many people.

·        Ms. Huma Shah, research scientist, co-organized Loebner 2006 with Tim Child and arranged for the Loebner Contest to return to London, at University College, working tirelessly behind the scenes to produce the contest.   Ms. Shah’s pictures of the events are here

·        Mr. Tim Child, CEO of TeleVirtual, who secured the venue at the VR Theater of University College London and together with Ms. Shah and Greg Conn installed the hardware.

·        Harrison Management Consultants and Keith Harrison for underwriting the cost of the computer equipment

·        Professor Penn, University College London, for permission to use the VR Theatre

·        Corrinne Frazzoni, University College London for seeing to necessary furnishings.

·        Mr. Greg Conn IT Manager of TeleVirtual, who established the communications networks.

The judges:

·        John Barnden Professor of AI, Birmingham University

·        Victoria Butler-Cole, barrister

·        Graham Duncan-Rowe, journalist

·        Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading,

Assisting Ms. Shah:

·        Chris Nelms, videographer.

·        Marc Allen

·        Frederik Fix

·        Dritan Nikolla

·        Adrian Wildeis

Bilingual People Provided the Humans:

·        Niklas Vestberg,

·        Lilla  Somos,

·        Yury Kanavalau

·        Kerry Shiels

The contestants:

·        Rollo Carpenter

·        Rober Medeksza

·        Noah Duncan

·        R. Churchill and M-C Jenkins

Transcripts of the Competition

Joan by Rollo Carpenter

Ultra Hal by Robert Medeksza

Cletus by Noah Duncan

John by R. Churchill and M-C Jenkins

To replay the transcripts in simulated real time with LoebnerPlayer.pl

1.     Download LoebnerPlayer.txt

2.     Save LoebnerPlayer.txt

3.     Change the extension from .txt to .pl

4.     Download and install Perl 5.8.x from activestate.com

a.     Click “Languages” in the top bar

b.     Select and click on “ActivePerl”

c.     Follow path to “Free Download” (or buy a development package)

d.     For Windows XP use the “MSI” installer package

5.     Click on LoebnerPlayer.pl

6.     Specify which file and which judge number you want to replay:

Note: Format of transcripts: For those who wish to analyze the data.

·        Col 1 - Judge Number,

·        Col 2 Time that character was inserted into judges’ screen

·        Col 3 Time that key press was struck

o       Note that the real time clocks of the computers were not necessarily set to local time, and should only be taken to represent differential times between key presses Time was found by using the function gettimeofday in module Time::HiRes in  Perl

·        Col 4 Location: Remote = Entity (Human or Program), Local = Judge

·        Col 5 Side: Left or Right (Human or Program)

o       Side was determined by a flip of the coin directly before each judging session

o       This is indicated by a header line before each change of judge

·        Col 6 Key press

For example, from 2 lines from the transcripts of program Joan by Rollo Carpenter

1.     “starting session 2 left= Program right = Human” 
[this line precedes 1st judge or change of judge and shows that left side is controlled (in this case) by the program, the right side by a human]

2.     “J2 011584861190593750 64285874 remote left H”
[This indicates that in session number 2 the letter 'H' was pressed by the program (remote = other, left =program)]