The Imagineering
Quarter is hosting the international Loebner Prize 2013
Contest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to find the world's best
conversational chatbot computer program
in collaboration with universities in the USA
(New Mexico), Denmark
(Aalborg), France
(LIMSI-CNRS),
England
(Exeter, Sheffield)
& island of Ireland (The
Queen's University of
Belfast, UCD, DCU)
and technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society UKRI chapter.
The contest is being held
during the CultureTECH 2013 digital
media and creativity festival, City
of Culture 2013 celebration,
European
Heritage Open Days and will precede
an International Workshop on: ``Waiting for Artificial Intelligence...''.
Each year an Annual Prize
& Bronze Medal is awarded to the most human-like computer.
Loebner Prize 2013 Annual First Prize is: US$ 4000 + Annual Bronze Medal, Second
Prize: US$ 1000, Third Prize: US$ 750 and Fourth Prize: US$ 250.
The Silver Medal Prize of US$25,000 + Silver Medal will be awarded if any program fools two or more judges when compared to two or more humans. At that point the contest will progress to the MultiModal stage in which entries in subsequent years will necessitate processing of MultiModal input (e.g. music, speech, pictures, videos). During the MultiModal stage, if any entry fools half the judges compared to half of the humans, the program's creator(s) will receive the Grand Prize of US$100,000 + 18kt solid Gold Medal, and the competition will be discontinued.
All prizes are sponsored by New York Philanthropist, Dr. Hugh Loebner.
A 2013 Call for Entries has been announced and the 4 entries with the highest scores will be selected as finalists. Please read carefully the 2013 Note to Entrants and 2013 Judge Program.
Loebner Prize 2013, in collaboration with Foyle Learning Community and TeenTech CIC, also includes a Junior Loebner Prize in which the Junior Judging Panel consists of school pupils between 12 and 14 years old. This prize first arose after a paper and discussion at AISB 2010 where Loebner Prize 2011 (Exeter) contest organiser, Dr. Ed Keedwell, proposed a Turing Test based on child development. An additional prize fund is available for the machines in this Junior Loebner Prize Contest.
The University of Exeter's Computer Science Department (Dr. Ed Keedwell, Kent McClymont) will run a live webcast of Loebner Prize 2013 and interested people from around the world will be able to follow the conversations the judges have as they happen.
Loebner Prize 2013 will be filmed by 360 Production (Derry/London) as part of a documentary on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for their Google YouTube Channel (with BBC Worldwide), `Head Squeeze', French documentary film maker Benoit Faiveley, UTV Magazine with Sarah Travers and German, Austrian, UK & Ireland TV/Radio & press will attend.
Loebner Prize 2013 is directed by Prof. Paul Mc Kevitt of The University of Ulster and produced by Dr. Hugh Loebner, together with Production and Location (drawn from The Imagineering Quarter) Crews and casting of Contest Entrants and International Expert and Junior Judging Panels.
The Loebner Prize is the first formal instantiation of `The Turing Test'. The test is named after Alan Turing, the brilliant British mathematician who also developed basic research on the theoretical foundation of computing science.
Without wishing to complicate things, a not altogether unrelated spanner in the works is the simple matter of, ``The Chinese Room Problem'' (Prof. John Searle, Berkeley, USA).
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), Georgia State University (Atlanta, USA), California State University (LA, USA), University College London, Surrey, Reading & Exeter Universities (England), Flinders University (Adelaide, Australia) and even Hugh Loebner's apartment in New York City (USA).
Dr. Hugh Loebner shows the Bronze medal presented to
Mohan Embar (+ US$ 4,000) for `ChipVivant'
during the Loebner Prize 2011 Contest
at The University of Exeter, England.
Judge Professor Noel Sharkey (Sheffield) [front right]
with Graduation Senior Officer Platform Party
for Prof. Sharkey's Honorary Doctor of Science (D.Sc.)
Graduation, University of Ulster, Coleraine, Monday, July 3rd, 2006
(courtesy Nigel McDowell).
Prof. John
McCarthy (Stanford University)
[R.I.P., October
24th, 2011]
& Prof. Paul Mc Kevitt
(then Aalborg University, Denmark)
at Grianán of
Aileach, Co. Donegal, Ireland (September 9th, 1997)
(courtesy Dr. Jon
Campbell [R.I.P., July
25th, 2010])
[John is sporting a GPS Device (yes, it was 1997) which he had just received as
a birthday (04/09) present].
Donegal woman,
Kathleen (Kay) McNulty
(Mauchly Antonelli)
in her high school graduation portrait, 1938.
Kathleen was one of the 6 original
programmers of the ENIAC,
the first general-purpose
electronic digital computer
(Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA).
