Flutterby™! : Loebner Prize

Back in August, I read John Sundman's Acts of the Apostles, and put myself on his mailing list. This morning he sent around his Salon article about the Loebner Prize. The Loebner Prize is an annual competition to create a program that will pass the Turing Test, with annual competitions that pay $2000 to the best entrant, offering $100,000 to the first program that actually passes the test. I especially like the protectionist attitude of the establishment A.I. researchers, rather than setting up ways to promote free-form research themselves, they spend a lot of time ripping on Loebner for the ways he's getting people to push the envelope (and make asses of the A.I. researchers, but that's a long and much older rant). Of course Loebner is a controversial figure without this, doing lots of activisim for the legalization of prostitution, and working to discredit the Olympics.