Lessons from a restricted Turing test

We report on the recent Loebner prize competition inspired by Turings test of intelligent behavior. The presentation covers the structure of the competition and the outcome of its first instantiation in an actual event, and an analysis of the purpose, design, and appropriateness of such a competition. We argue that the competition has no clear purpose, that its design prevents any useful outcome, and that such a competition is inappropriate given the current level of technology. We then speculate as to suitable alternatives to the Loebner prize. This report is available from the Center for Research in Computing Technology, Harvard University, as Technical Report TR-19-92. To appear in Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery. The Turing Test and the Loebner Prize The English logician and mathematician Alan Turing, in an attempt to develop a working definition of intelligence free of the difficulties and philosophical pitfalls of defining exactly what constitutes th...