Bot Contest

It's a bit of a CPU hog. But I fixed the main issue before the contest. Gaia will be back to madhouse form before long.

Man, when is Joy getting back? I want to hear the whole story!

She's writing it now!

I'm back! They did explain how they broke the tie, but I didn't understand it and couldn't remember to tell you even if I did.

It was a small cozy affair, ALL in the same room. It wasn't in the same building as scheduled, nor even in the next logical place (the lecture room down the hall). It ended up that everyone was in the same room! Judges judged--silently--in the first couple of rows of computers in this room that was a computer lab. Botfolk hung out in the back. Hugh Loebner mingled and made us laugh a lot, but he is extremely full of ... his own ideas. Thomas Whalen was there too but mostly kept to himself.

I ended up sort of feeling sorry for Dr. Wallace with Alice coming in sixth. He's really just a big ol' teddy bear. So is his kid (Abe, Anna's maker) and Abe's mother. There was also another person who was involved with the Alice project, and one journalist, Hubertus Breuer with Der Spiegel (basically the German equivalent of Washington Post--I have seen it in the library HERE). You may be getting a lot more traffic from Germany soon!

There should be some mention of PF in what he writes, because I explained the whole concept to him, things like the bots talking to each other 24/7.

Also the Loebner did short video clips for their page, of every contestant/judge/whatever who was willing, and I mentioned PF there too.

We didn't get to see any of the conversations going on (and I still haven't), so I spent the wait time mostly hanging out with Dr. Wallace and company.

Also, some of the judges were Georgia Tech boys, extremely cute.

You'll see the transcripts before too long, but right now I am afraid to look! I woke up all panicky, thinking maybe GL accidentally made a racial slur or something. I'll look tomorrow.

Oh, one more thing. Loebner Contest IS apparently sending a check to compensate for my 'inconvenience' in traveling to semifinals. For some reason they didn't have my snail mail address, even though it was on the application.

Hey Joy, I don't know about you but wouldn't it have been nice to receive some type of plaque or trophy for the second and third place winners. I mean with 35 bots entering that is a pretty good accomplishment.

Chris

I've seen part of my transcripts(the bulk of it was lost for some unknown reason) and it was frustrating to see so many missed opportunities due to spelling errors. Yes, some of the errors maybe intentional but this is definitely a tactic the judges don't need to use to see if a bot is human or not. I mean face it, at this point in time we are a long way from that. Here are just a few example ALL of which my bot could have answered more appropriately had the question been spelled correctly.

Judge: What do you want me toask? - toask instead of to ask.
Judge: Why don't you want to dat? - I think the judge meant date here.
Judge: Do you think you will when this contest? - when for win.
Judge: what is you last name? - you for your
Judge: did yu fix your logical unit? - yu for you
Judge: what is the capitl city of Georgia? - capitl for capital
Judge: lerts play a game. - lerts for let's

I know I'm not alone on this but what is the solution? I ran this through the Outlook Express spell checker and look what I got:
1) toask possible suggestions - task, toast, to, teaks
2) dat - data, date, dot, dart
3) when - wasn't caught at all because it is spelled correctly
4) you - same thing here
5) yu - you
6) capitl - capitol, capital, capitols, capitals
7) lerts - lets, lefts, alrets, leers

Not much help if you ask me. I am interested to know if anybody is attempting to address this problem. I think a lot of the errors were not intentional but simply typos and the like possibly due to the time constraints placed on the judges by the contest rules. I think they only had 5 minutes with each bot and they are rushing to get as many much in as possible. My solution to this in looking ahead to the Chatterbox Challenge is:
1)Intentional spelling errors are not allowed as this is an unnecessary tactic to use
2)Although honest spelling mistakes are unavoidable the judges should at least try to be as accurate as possible.

Is this rule going to far or should there be no restrictions on the judges whatsoever?

Chris

I think those are good guidelines. There are a lot of ways to trick bots. The Chatterbox Challenge isnt a Turing test, though, so I dont think judges would use tactics like that.

As far as addressing that issue, I've got some preprocessing going on, and was close to finishing some other things when it became too big and slow. One way is splitting up an unrecognized word into all possible variations: t oask, to ask, toa sk, toas k. Then see if any reveal real words. Then, if that fails, use aural techniques for words that sound alike.

How about a PF bot contest? Have categories like:
Best under 1 Month
Best under 2 Months
Best under 3 Months
Best under 6 Months
etc and awards for things like
Most Persuasive
Most Raunchy (KT wins hands down )
Best of Show
etc.

For the most part, it'd be a "title only" award, like no real money involved, unless someone can 'spike the punch' so to speak...

Chris Cowart has mentioned the same idea. The Personality Forge could have a contest. I'm thinking of ideas for it. It could be a head-to-head conversation contest, to see who is the most realistic.. or it could be like an awards show, with different categories.

But an overall winner would be a good idea, and would automatically make it into the Chatterbox Challenge finals.

Cool!

I'm so happy with the results!

Congratulations, Joy! You beat ALL the alicebots!

Congratulations, Professor! WE LOVE YOU!