A Turing Test – the biggest ever staged, according to New Scientist – took place on 23rd June at Bletchley Park to mark the Turing centenary.
The test involved 150 conversations, 30 judges, 25 humans and five chatbots. The article points out that the Loebner Prize typically involves four judges and four chatbots. The contest was won by ‘Eugene Goostman‘, “a chatbot with the personality of a 13-year-old boy” which fooled judges 29% of the time.
TechRepublic have published an interview with Hugh Loebner, originator of the Loebner Prize competition, in which he discusses the prize and the future of thinking machines.
The 2012 Loebner Prize competition (based on the Turing test) will be held at Bletchley Park. A Bletchley Park Trust press release explains the competition procedure:
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 [a bronze medal and $7,000].
The competition will take place on 15 May 2012, starting at 1:00pm. Visitors to the Park will be able to follow the conversations on screens in the Mansion and these will also be streamed live online for the first time.