Loebner Prize
The contest was launched in 1990 by Hugh Loebner in conjunction with the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies, Massachusetts, United States.
$100,000 is the reward for the first program that judges cannot distinguish from a real human in a Turing test that includes deciphering and understanding text, visual, and auditory input.
The rules varied over the years and early competitions featured restricted conversation Turing tests[6] but since 1995 the discussion has been unrestricted.
For the three entries in 2007, Robert Medeksza, Noah Duncan and Rollo Carpenter,[7] some basic "screening questions" were used by the sponsor to evaluate the state of the technology.
For the first time in 2008 the sponsor allowed introduction of a preliminary phase to the contest opening up the competition to previously disallowed web-based entries judged by a variety of invited interrogators.
Loebner responded by jokingly observing that Minsky's offering a prize to stop the competition effectively made him a co-sponsor.
[9] Questioning was initially restricted to a single topic of the contestant's choice, such as "whimsical conversation",[8][12] a domain suiting standard chatbot tricks.
[15] In 2003, the contest was organised by Professor Richard H. R. Harper and Dr. Lynne Hamill from the Digital World Research Centre at the University of Surrey.
[7][17] On August 30, the four finalists were announced: The contest was held on 17 September in the VR theatre, Torrington Place campus of University College London.
[20] No bot passed the Turing test, but the judges ranked the three contestants as follows: The winner received $2,250 and the annual medal.
The 2008 competition was organised by professor Kevin Warwick, coordinated by Huma Shah and held on October 12 at the University of Reading, UK.
[21] After testing by over one hundred judges during the preliminary phase, in June and July 2008, six finalists were selected from thirteen original entrant artificial conversational entities (ACEs).
Will Pavia, a journalist for The Times, has written about his experience; a Loebner finals' judge, he was deceived by Elbot and Eugene.
The four finalists and their chatterbots were Bruce Wilcox (Rosette), Adeena Mignogna (Zoe), Mohan Embar (Chip Vivant) and Ron Lee (Tutor), who finished in that order.
That year there was an addition of a panel of junior judges, namely Georgia-Mae Lindfield, William Dunne, Sam Keat and Kirill Jerdev.
The four finalists and their chatterbots were Mohan Embar (Chip Vivant), Bruce Wilcox (Angela), Daniel Burke (Adam), M. Allan (Linguo), who finished in that order.
That year, a team from the University of Exeter's computer science department (Ed Keedwell, Max Dupenois and Kent McClymont) conducted the first-ever live webcast of the conversations.
The four finalists and their chatbots were Steve Worswick (Mitsuku), Dr. Ron C. Lee (Tutor), Bruce Wilcox (Rose) and Brian Rigsby (Izar), who finished in that order.
[29] The judges were Jacob Aaron, Physical sciences reporter for New Scientist; Rory Cellan-Jones, Technology correspondent for the BBC; Brett Marty, Film Director and Photographer; Ariadne Tampion, Writer.
The ranks were as follows: The 2019 Loebner Prize was held at the University of Swansea from 12th–15th September, as part of a larger exhibition which looked at creativity in computers.
