Citation: Loebner.net Home Page, with 2018 update.

UPDATE: 

This contest is now the: AISB Loebner Prize 

Visit aisb.org.uk for new contest information.

 

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 cash prize 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.

UPDATE: On 12/4/16 Hugh's wife, Elaine Loebner, announced Hugh had "died peacefully in his sleep”.

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The Loebner Prize was originally made possible by funding from Crown Industries, Inc., of East Orange NJ.

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

Your program will interact with the Judge Program using the Loebner Prize Protocol "LPP" via the sub folder with your program's name which is nested within the Communications folder.  The other three folders are used during the competition, but are not necessary for testing. 

The Loebner Prize contest, first inaugurated in 1991 at The Computer Museum (Boston, USA), has been hosted internationally at locations such as: Carnegie Hall (NY, USA), The Science Museum (London), The Powerhouse Museum (Sydney, Australia), Bletchley Park (England), Dartmouth College (NH, USA), California State University (LA, USA), University College London, Surrey, Reading & Exeter Universities (England), Flinders University (Adelaide, Australia) and even Hugh Loebner's appartment in New York City (USA).

Information on the Loebner Prize

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Winners of Previous Contests

1991 Joseph Weintraub , Thinking Systems Software

1992 Joseph Weintraub, Thinking Systems Software

1993 Joseph Weintraub, Thinking Systems Software

1994 Thomas Whalen

1995 Joseph Weintraub, Thinking Systems Software

1996 Jason Hutchens,  Agworld Pty Ltd

1997 David Levy, Intelligent Research Ltd.

1998 Robby Garner

1999 Robby Garner

2000 Richard Wallace

2001 Richard Wallace

2002 Kevin Copple

2003 Juergen Pirner

2004 Richard Wallace

2005 Rollo Carpenter

2006 Rollo Carpenter

2007 Robert Medeksza

2008 Fred Roberts and Artificial Solutions

 2009 David Levy

2010 Bruce Wilcox

2011 Bruce Wilcox

2012 Mohan Embar

2013 Stephen Worswick

2014 Bruce Wilcox

 2015 Stephen Worswick

 2016 Stephen Worswick

  2017 Stephen Worswick


Read more at:

https://web.archive.org