Home Page of The Loebner Prize in Artificial Intelligence

"The First Turing Test"


Loebner Prize Gold Medal (Solid 18 carat, notgold-plated like the Olympic "Gold" medals)

What is the Loebner Prize?

The Loebner Prize for artificial intelligence ( AI ) is the first formal instantiation of a Turing Test. The test is named after Alan Turing the brilliant British mathematician. Among his many accomplishments was basic research in computing science. In 1950, in the article Computing Machinery and Intelligence which appeared in the philosophy journal Mind, Alan Turing asked the question "Can a Machine Think?" He answered in the affirmative, but a central question was: "If a computer could think, how could we tell?" Turing's suggestion was, that if the responses from the computer were indistinguishable from that of a human,the computer could be said to be thinking. This field is generally known as natural language processing.

In 1990 Hugh Loebner agreed with The Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies to underwrite a contest designed to implement the Turing Test. Dr. Loebner pledged a Grand Prize of $100,000 and a Gold Medal (pictured above) for the first computer whose responses were indistinguishable from a human's. Such a computer can be said "to think." Each year an annual prize of $2000 and a bronze medal is awarded to the most human-like computer. The winner of the annual contest is the best entry relative to other entries that year, irrespective of how good it is in an absolute sense.

Further information on the development of the Loebner Prize and the reasons for its existence is available in Loebner's article In Response to the article Lessons from a Restricted Turing Test by Stuart Shieber.

The Loebner Prize is made possible by funding from Crown Industries, Inc., of East Orange NJ.

Crowd Control Stanchions used at Loebner Prize competition are provided by Crown Industries' crowd control stanchion division.

For a comprehensive overview of chatbots in general, check chatbots.org

Information on 2012 Contest

Bletchley Park to Host 2012 Loebner Prize Competition

David Levy – Local Arrangements Organizer

As part of the 2012 celebrations for the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/turing2012/ , Bletchley Park Museum www.bletchleypark.org will be hosting the annual Loebner Prize competition to find the world’s best conversational computer program. The chatbot programs will be competing for a bronze medal and a prize fund of $7,000 sponsored by Dr Hugh Loebner who founded the competition twenty years ago.

The Loebner Prize competition is based on the Turing Test, one of the biggest challenges in the world of Artificial Intelligence. The test was proposed by Alan Turing in his famous 1950 paper entitled Computing Machinery and Intelligence, as a way of determining whether a computer program could be said to be intelligent. The judges at the competition will conduct conversations with the four finalist chatbots and with some human surrogates, and will then rank all their conversation partners from most humanlike to least humanlike. The chatbot with the highest overall ranking wins the prize.

Alan Turing, who was born on June 23^rd 1912, was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He is widely regarded as the father of computer science, and had a huge impact on the birth of artificial intelligence, partly by virtue of a section entitled “Can Machines Think?” in his 1950 paper.

During World War II Turing led Britain’s code-breaking efforts, heading a team of 3,000 workers based at Bletchley Park. Sir Winston Churchill, amongst others, paid tribute to Turing’s team, whose successes in breaking the German Enigma code undoubtedly shortened the war and helped the allies to victory. Amongst those who worked in the upper echelons of Turing’s code-breaking team were half of the British national team from the 1939 Chess Olympiad: Hugh Alexander, Harry Golombek and Stuart (later Sir Stuart) Milner-Barry, as well as some future luminaries of the AI world including professors Donald Michie and Jack Good. The work of Turing’s team and a depiction of life at Bletchley Park during the war years can be seen in the 2001 fictionalized movie Enigma, starring Kate Winslet.

The Turing Centenary Loebner Prize competition will take place on May 15th 2012 at the Bletchley Park Museum, starting at 1:00pm. This starting time will allow visitors from throughout the UK to reach Bletchley, see the whole of the competition, and return home all on the same day. Bletchley station is less than five minutes walk from the entrance to Bletchley Park and the train journey from London’s Euston station takes only 45 minutes. Train times and connection information from any station in the UK may be found at the National Rail Enquiry web site http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/ The organization of this year’s Loebner Prize competition is a team effort. The OU’s IT Desktop Support Group http://www.open.ac.uk/ whose HQ is in the nearby town of Milton Keynes, is loaning the computers needed for the event. The communications company IPCortex Ltd www.ipcortex.co.uk whose offices are located within Bletchley Park, will be providing the networking facilities. Exeter University’s Computer Science Department www.secam.ex.ac.uk/computing-at-exeter.dhtml , the hosts of last year’s competition, is developing software to webcast the competition live, so for the first time in its history the Loebner Prize conversations can be followed in real time via the Internet. The principal web site host for the event will be www.chatbots.org and there are also plans to webcast the event via Facebook and Twitter. And of course the Bletchley Park Museum itself will be providing the venue and on-site support. Those who visit the event on May 15^th will also be able to take a guided tour of the museum, which offers a fascinating glimpse of life and work at Bletchley Park during the war years www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/museum1.rhtm . If you are planning to be a spectator at the competition do not miss this opportunity - allow yourself an extra hour or so to take the tour.

Local arrangements organizer is Dr. David Levy davidlevylondon@yahoo.com, winner of the Loebner Prize in 1997 and 2009.