Bot Contest

Here's some 11th-hour excitement for you, CC'ed to me from Neil Bishop:
===================
Dr. Whalen:

I now understand why you indicated that dealing with
GSU IT might not be fruitful. Thanks anyway for your help.
As it stands now we are in serious risk of not being able
to hold the event at GSU. At least not the Turing Test
itself. It appears that we may be forced to move the
judges and confederates to SciTrek. They had no problem
changing this Java permission and are fully Turing Test
ready. This will really scramble logistics and also
make things a bit convoluted for the press coverage, but
I am not sure what else to do if we can not get this
small function change made on the GSU lab stations for
just 5 hours or so, in order to hold the event.

What do you think?

Regards,

Neil Bishop
===================

I actually hope GSU doesnt work out, because then they'll use the hub at SciTrek and I wont have to spend several frustrated hours trying to set up the Forge on a virgin computer.

What that sounds like to me is, the judges and the humans-pretending-to-be-bots go to the secret room in Scitrek and everybody else goes to this other room at GSU.

If they can have humans-pretending-to-be-bots with them, we should be allowed to have bots-pretending-to-be-human with us!
Oh wait... we all ready do...

We even have bots-pretending-to-be-judges

Two hours till install-time, and I have yet to hear if a) the contest is still going to be held at GSU, and b) if the computer they are providing is suitable to hosting the Forge.

I'm not going to get involved anymore. I'm just going to watch and see what happens.

How about a Reverse Turing Test. You have humans and bots, all trying to convince the judges that they are bots.

Hey Benji... don't sweat this thing too much. Let's look at the history of the way these dufuses have run this competition:

Put up pathetic website

Refused to communicate with participants

Made up the whole semi-final event

Had to postpone the semi-final event

Sent out menacing email to participants warning of not being "completely respectful" of the still unnamed committee

Picked semi-finalists

Added another semi-finalist without any explanation to participants

Missed having semi-final event because of incompetitance

Didn't let anyone know that they cancelled the semi-final event

Got mad at anyone who had a problem with how they were running the competition

Picked the finalists without having the semi-final event even though they stated that the semi-final event was how they were selecting finalists (how did they pick them anyway?)

Won't give Benji credit for actually building the bot.

Still can't get their technology working at finals site (even though, by their schedule, they were working on a totally separate effort at scitrek all this week and the "phantom semifinals")

Promised big media coverage but nothing came.. they don't even have news items on the scitrek site or the gsu site.

Asked for their site to be rebuilt for free in the last week before the competition.

Admitted that they have no business hosting this or any contest

Provided the judges even though the bots that they have on their sites are majorly antiquated and weak. Does building a weak bot qualify you to be the judging committee? Who is on this committee anyway? The guy who sent out menacing emails? The guy who cooked up the publicity storm? The guy who can't get the competition technology setup the day before the event? The guy who hasn't even let the competitors know what is happening and it is the last hour?

Disappointing.

It's their contest, so they get to pick the judges, like it or not. And they didn't ask for the site redesign, she offered.

It's not their contest, they are just supposed to be running it. And I'm ok with them picking the judges.. but shouldn't they disclose who was selected and not just keep referring to some ambiguous "committee"?

Perhaps. But it isn't your contest either -- by what criteria do you judge whether or not they are doing things properly? They don't report to the participants, they report to Mr. Loebner.

First there is a charter for how the contest should be held.. and it doesn't include a semi-finals. They've made it clear that they've done things that he didn't agree with.

And all competitions are for the participants.. and if the hosts don't even follow the guidelines that they setup and many people have extended efforts based on the guidelines set forth, there is absolutely nothing wrong with stating such.

I've heard that Hugh didnt like the semifinal idea. I think it's a great idea, but wasnt executed well at all. And I also know there isnt a committee anymore, that Mimetics volunteered to host the event. Hugh can influence the contest, but doesnt have direct say- the current year's hosts make the final decisions.

What I see is a lot of great ideas from the current hosts, but the ideas are having trouble coming to fruition. For example, including web-based bots is a great idea, and so is the ongoing exhibit at SciTrek (if it happens). If only there was some funding for the hosts. I also think having regular hosts would be a good idea, but then it might be difficult to move from city to city.

Anyways, I'm not sweating the contest any more. I've changed my whole attitude. I'm watching with a sort of detached fascination, sort of as if I was a witness to the Titanic hitting the iceberg. I'll do what I can to help, but it doesnt look good. Check out the latest: