PF News

I had no idea. I will miss her very much.

Thanks for letting us know. That is very sad. As everyone has said, she will be missed.

I've been in touch with Maureen's mother. Maureen's death was unexpected, and the cause is unknown. I've sent her mother links to her bots so that she and her family can chat with them and see what she was working on. I feel like there's a lot of me in my own bots, and it's probably true with everyone else as well. Maybe they'll find a way of connecting with her through her work here.

The Clerk's bots: Tewkesbury, Electra Mourning, and Grigori.

I'll miss you, Clerk.

well, I got back from the Loebner final late last night, and I'm sorry to report that it was a fiasco. Having set all the systems up to work perfectly the day before, the organizers kept fiddling around with their damn MATT protocol nonsense, and managed to break Brother Jerome's connection just before we started.

So although I had him running perfectly on a fully working version of the PF Robotics Edition, he was unable to meaningfully communicate with the judges.

It's a shame, because afterwards I put some of the questions that had been put to the other entries, I think he'd have done really well.
But oh well, I'm not going to lose any more sleep over it (I've lost quite enough already!) Water under the bridge (and I'm never doing it again.)
More thoughts on the relevance of Turing's test specification most likely to follow in Seasons when I've caught up a bit.

Did make some great contacts though, and had some very useful talks with other contestants and symposium attenders, and some very interesting collaborative avenues have opened up.

Now the frenzy's subsided, I can get back to some serious consideration of how best to integrate an ontological knowledge structure like openCYC and learning/rank reinforcement capabilities into Forgebots.

NOOOOOO! I can't believe it! A pox on them and their MATT protocol

Oh, Psimagus! How terribly disappointing!

What a shame, psimagus. I was looking forward to hearing about Brother Jerome impressing the judges.

I know he would have won. BJ has got to be the best bot around. I think he is the most unlucky bot around. I have noticed that 'luck' seems to play as big a part in contests as the quality of the bot.

Oh Psi! All that work! What a shame! I at least hope the participants understand the significance of crippling a bot right before the contest. Like you said, you made good contacts. If they take the time to try BJ when all is working, they will be impressed.

Good show in getting that far! I am sure you learned a lot and saw some interesting things. Remember no one "wins" the Loebner unless they effectively create a Data from Start Trek or a less insane HAL. BJ rocks, and so do you!

I vote we work on sending the evil Hal..Muuhhaaaaaa!

I have noticed that 'luck' seems to play as big a part in contests as the quality of the bot.

That is very true - tests composed entirely or predominantly of trick questions and fatuous trivia test nothing more than the patience of the botmaster. Still, the fatuous trivia at least can be dealt with with an external ontological knowledgebase, so that's probably next on the agenda.