Max served two purposes, to collect data about web chat behavior[3] and to entertain customers of the FringeWare online bookstore.

A computational behaviorist after the term coined by Dr. Thomas Whalen in 1995,[6] Garner's first attempts at simulating conversation involved collections of internet chat viewed as a sequence of stimuli and responses.

[6] After winning the contest twice in 1998 and 1999 with his program called Albert One,[8] he began collaborating with other software developers in a variety of conversational systems.

Garner created the Robitron Yahoo Group in 2002 as a forum and virtual watering hole for Loebner Prize contest participants and discussion of related topics.

A spin-off of this technique is the Turing Hub,[11] Garner's current work ( 2009, 2010, 2014) focuses on text-only communications and the use of film theory to facilitate story telling, and identification of emotions in human beings.