Home Page of The Loebner Prize in Artificial Intelligence

"The First Turing Test"


Loebner Prize Gold Medal (Solid 18 carat, not gold-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.

Information on 2008 Competition

The 2008 Loebner Prize Contest will be held 12 October 2008 at Reading University, UK under the direction of Professor Kevin Warwick

The winner of the 2008 Loebner Prize Annual Medal will receive US$ 3000.

Loebner 2008 Rules can be found here: http://www.rdg.ac.uk/cirg/loebner/cirg-loebner-main.asp