[LINK] Telstra - talking to a machine

[David Chia]

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2097368,00.html

<quote>

 ALICE talks her way to victory in AI challenge
 14:38 Tuesday 16th October 2001
 Rupert Goodwins  

 ALICE got the highest score at this year's contest, held at the
Science Museum in London on
 Saturday, although the silver and gold medals remain unawarded. The
silver medal -- and
 $25,000 -- will go to any program able to convince half the judges
that it is human; the gold
 medal plus $100,000 will be awarded to a program that does the same
but through speech rather
 than by text. When that happens the contest will end, but in the 11
years since it started no
 software has come close. ALICE was judged better than a human
correspondent only once
 during the testing. 

 The Loebner Prize, like the
 Turning Test itself, is not highly
 regarded by the professional AI
 community: the doyen of classic
 AI, Marvin Minksy, is on record as
 describing it as stupid, obnoxious
 and unproductive. He went as far
 as offering $100 to anyone who
 persuaded Hugh Loebner, the
 New York businessman who
 created the competition, to stop.
 Loebner replied that as this will
 only happen when someone wins
 the gold medal, Minsky was in
 honour bound to pay that money to
 the winner and was thus a
 co-sponsor.

 ...

 It then offered
 to sing a song and refused to open the pod bay doors, behavioural
traits that experts predict will
 be exhibited by most AI programs from now until the heat death of the
universe. 

</quote>


To be fair the human control group should acts dumb and not trying to
outsmart
the questioner and made it obvious that a human was answering.
Otherwise it can
be a process of elimination on which are the computers.

 Q What happens to an ice cube in a hot drink? 

 A It is still there, just in a more relaxed state. Hot drinks will do
that. 

 Q A more relaxed state? Meaning what? 

 A Sort of spread out and throughout. 

 Q Altogether, how many feet do four cats have?

 A Do you mean how long are they when in line or do you mean the
number
   of paws in total? 

 Q Both... 

 A Paws should be 16. Feet in length about four, without tails
extended.