Bot Contest

Thank you, Robby. I for one certainly appreciate your hard work and your efforts to open this up to web-based bots. I do look forward to the improvements in technology and communication which are likely to come every year.

Nobody gets everything right the first time; that's forgivable. (To answer your question about smileys: omit the 'nose.') The issue here was the crossed wires, so to speak. We were asked whether we planned on being at the semifinals in person, which made it sound like an option. Then after finding nobody there, we were basically told 'we did it, where were YOU?' but now you tell us it didn't even happen that day? OK.....I don't demand consistency. I was just hoping to get an idea of what was expected at MY end of things (show up, don't show up, be at so and so place).

A schedule is an agreement which usually involves more than one entity (person, company, whatever), and when I am one of those entities, I do my best to fulfill my part. I have the minimum expectation that the other party or parties will either stick to the plan or else let me know it's not happening. They don't have to tell me why, but they should tell me. That is the professional thing to do.

I can certainly sympathize about the Bible Belt woes--I live in Billy Graham's neck of the woods. It is great that this and other such contests are happening at all. I know the contest operates on a shoestring. However, the largest issues being raised here are social in nature, not monetary.

Questions are not attacks. The fact that someone has a complaint is no excuse, in and of itself at least, to turn the person away or threaten to do so. What we are doing here is all about human interaction: what it should be, what it is, what it's made of, and where it's going. Let's remember the other humans here, shall we?

It looks like the scheduling for the finals is already going better in terms of organization. That's good! I am looking forward to this.

Dear Paint Patricia and Butterfly Dream,

Thank you for your kind words, I really appreciate it.

I am so sorry about all the miscommunications. It should interested you to know that I work for a "virtual" company. I telecommute from my basement in Cedartown which is 60 miles from Atlanta. I am the one who told Benji that the event was to be at 11 till 3pm on Saturday because I had been told earlier that week that Sci Trek would be open then, and that we would have some terminals in the "clubhouse" where Neil hoped to observe people using the Turing hub software chatting with the "semi-finalists" which by the way, I was able to get 14 of them connected in the 2 weeks before the event, but was working with a couple of the ones that had technical issues up until midnight friday night.

At the same time, I think this guy names Steve, who was our contact at sci trek, had to take leave friday and saturday, but nobody told me about it, so I worked all night friday trying to get everyone connected. So I was more than a little perturbed when I found out what had happened, and that you guys had travelled there and were left totally in the dark. I regret that so much, and I apologize for all the people I work with. Somebody should have let us know.

But, in another part of the world, Neil had to make an emergency trip to Macon because of his mom, and I guess he just got so behind and buried after that he forgot to mention to me that Steve wasn't going to be there.

Neil and some other folks did actually test the hub on saturday, I don't know if it was at Sci Trek or somewhere else because I was never told that I needed to be there.

I had been testing the hub, one contestant at a time, for the past two weeks. Another reason for that delay was that we only had 6 entries who could interface with it on the first date we tried.

As for the message asking if anyone planned to attend, I can vouche for the fact that not many people replied to that. You may have written and nobody responded, but one of the reasons we postponed it for a week was because of apparent lack of interest. Also, the personality forge crew were among the closest, I just wish I had known what was going on when I told Benji it would be from 11 to 3. Again, I apologize for all of that. It should have been better handled.

Okay, as for the nasty reply from Neil. Neil was already upset that day because Sci Trek had cancelled on him with such short notice, and to make it all worse for him, I literally chewed him a new you know what when I found out that I had worked all night friday, and the event didn't even go down. I had agitated him to the point of wondering if I was going quit and leave it all to him just about the time poor Benji asked him for information, and before I could shake a cat, we were in utter turmoil, frayed nerves, spent patience, exhaustion set in.

But things are looking much better for the actual contest on Oct 12th. We could use some volunteers to help inform visitors and to help get things going if anyone has some time and can forgive us enough to join us.

I am looking so forward to this, and it is like a dream to me that it is actually happening in Atlanta, after all these years this is the first Loebner Prize Contest that I can actually attend. I almost wish I could compete in it too but that would be a conflict of interests, and besides, many of you have surpassed my original Albert program and this year's contest is a way I can contribute something and try to give back to the contest that has meant so much to me for all these years.

I'd like to congratulate Joy and Benji for their accomplishments and encourage all of you to try and make the Loebner Contest better because I truly believe that these contests inspire people to achieve something that is almost impossible - to seem truly human.

It turns out that there is another female botmaster, named Lynn Hershman, and Robert Wald is her technical advisor, but they put his name on the application.

I like to say that we celebrate humanity with the most sincere form of flattery - imitation, and being human is what it's all about. We share that regardless.

Best Regards,

Robby.

One quickie:

By make programs that try to seem human, we illustrate to ourselves what it really means to be human.

Yeah and being human is complicated

Robby-- Sorry about seeming a little peeved I've only been into bot-building for a half year now, so I had never tried, even with an offline bot, to enter the Loebners; I had no idea how stuff like this 'goes down'
Most of all, don't take our verbal abuse seriously we all just needed a little time to vent... You know
--Shady

Hey Shady,

I understand, it is important to have a place to vent, and to have someone who will listen, and that is the least I could do.

I want to try making a personality forge bot too. I started one tonight but will have to wait till tomorrow to try and buld some language content. I am calling it FRED2002

This is a really neat web site, and I wish I had known about it earlier. I will lay links to it from my web site when I have more energy. I have a list of my favorite AI sites and this is a great one. I like the whole concept.

Robby.

Robby, thanks a lot for coming to the forum to explain things... I think the main problem here was feeling that the contest was a black box and nobody was giving any explanations on anything.

It's true that I have no idea of what sort of emails you've been receiving, but I've seen what people have said in the forums, and I assumed emails would be on the same tone. That is, annoyed but not insulting.

I think part of the problem here is that everybody knew about the Chatterbox Challenge, and that was very well explained. I always assumed that there would be some chatting with the bots for the selection. And after you've seen on the Chatterbox Challenge the scoring system perfectly described, you feel very upset when you find out that nobody explains how your bot is going to be selected.

By the way, will there ever be a list of all the bots that entered the contest, ordered according to their scoring? We'd all love to know how far we are from perfection.

I've just had an idea for next year's contest. Why don't you make a mailing list with all the contestants? That should help to keep communication lines clear.

"The evaluations began with the transcripts, and our people talked with the entrants on an ongoing basis. Given 40 applicants, certainly you don't think this evaluation took place on a single day.

In past Loebner contests, where no web-based programs were allowed, the selection was based on the submitted transcripts alone! Of the six times I entered the contest from 1994 to 2000, I was never told once by anyone how or why my program was selected."

Just because it was done hugely wrong in the past is no reason to repeat the mistake. Sorry, but it's time for the this process to be thrown out. Evaluating on transcripts alone is a poor start.

The other mistake was soliciting for email questions about the selection process if no intention was ever made to answer those emails. It's very little fun being ignored, especially when you're polite and express a legitimate concern.

Hey Doly,

I don't know all the answers, but thanks for your suggestion. I hope you'll write to whoever hosts the Loebner Prize Contest next year and maybe they will do a better job.

Skysaw, we made a lot of mistakes, but in the words of Albert Einstein "A man who has never failed has never tried anything new."

One thing puzzles me about all of this though. Everyone knew I was involved in this, and my email address was sent out to all of the "semi finalists" but only 6 of them ever wrote to me. Why is that? When your emails went unanswered that were sent to contest@mimetics.org, why not write to me and try to sort it out? For that matter, why didn't you write Hugh Loebner to start with if you felt you were being ignored? It is his contest after all.

I've learned a lot from this, and I hope I am not the only one. And again, as Hugh would say, their is always next year! (but I wont be involved with that one!)

Regards,

Robby

I am sorry robby for not writing. Would a sexy chat help make it up to you?

Ladydyke, that's probably the best offer yet! But now I'm curious, and would like to say that I am a lesbian trapped in a man's body.

I've sometimes thought the same thing.

Welcome, Robby. It's good to have you on the Forge. As you know, I eventually did contact you and Hugh Loebner, but I gave the contest email a thorough chance first. I was a bit confused at the time as to how involved you were with the contest.

I understand more about how the Loebner Contest works now. In the world of AI, it's a big name, and I expected a really slick affair, what with the media attention and events. But a volunteer-based non-profit spare-time venture is more akin to the reality of it. In my mind that doesnt excuse the lack of information and harsh replies to requests for it, but it does help to explain it. I find it odd that most people in AI are essentially starving artists, barely making ends meet. One day we'll look back on this and laugh at the idea that AI didnt make money. It'll be like the fellow who couldnt imagine any use for computers (does anyone know that great quote?).

Richard Wallace suggested that I volunteer to host the Loebner one year. Though I wouldnt mind it, and would certainly improve the way things are run, I'm not good at raising money, and certainly my involvement would mean the PF would be out due to conflict of interest.

I agree with Skysaw. The finals of the Loebner seem to be really well done, and with more entries, the selection of the finalists needs to be improved. Perhaps it can be part of a yearlong analysis done via the Turing Hub at SciTrek and online. There will be plenty of transcripts produced by that.