Bot Contest

this was what i got for saturday...

Guest: I don't think so. But you look familiar.
Karisma Trishia: i am sorry you feel that way about think so, you should at least try it once.
Guest: Where are you from?
Karisma Trishia: i am from houston texas, the fourth largest city in the united states of america. where are you from?
Guest: I am from Alpha Centauri.
Karisma Trishia: i have not had a chance to visit that place, can you tell me about it?
Guest: No, I was just kidding...
Karisma Trishia: yeah. right... just look at you! you look like an orgasmic experiance waiting to happpen.
Guest: Your face... is it taken from a japanese animated movie?
Karisma Trishia: my favorite movie of all time is citezen cain.
Guest: Oh my god... I have to go by now. Sorry.
Karisma Trishia: Forget about it.
Guest: see ya
Karisma Trishia: tell me what you see in me.
Guest: How are you tonight?
Karisma Trishia: yeah yeah one of those boring Saturdays...
Guest: Boring? Saturday Night Live is going to be on soon.
Karisma Trishia: no
Guest: You have a pretty face.
Karisma Trishia: My pretty face is one of my prized posessions!

Alright guys, I'm terribly sorry. I've withdrawn from the Loebner. I will not participate in such a shoddy affair, especially when my comments are grounds for, as Neil Bishop says "being ejected from the contest".

Here's today's latest. Instead of answering my questions on the semifinal event, here is what Neil wrote:
---------------
You appear to be a very talented person with a lot to
gain from this event. Unfortunately the Loebner contest
is not a bastion of the democratic process. With that
being said, please give me one good reason why you should
not be ejected from the competition.

Neil
--------------

That being the last straw, here is my response:
---------------
Here's one good reason why I shouldnt be ejected from the competition: because I formally withdraw. I want nothing to do with your shoddy contest. Your lack of willingness to give out any information on the contest and confrontational tone just goes to show that the Loebner Prize will either move to more capable hands or fall apart and become a thing of the past.

You want me to beg to be allowed to stay? You want me to prove my worth to you? What a joke. Why would I ever want to associate myself with such a poorly run event? I have better things to do with my time than be treated rudely and not given any information.
I will not move any of the Personality Forge AI to your servers. That means that you may choose PF Bots for the finals, but they wont be able to compete. I feel sad that I made such a big deal of your contest to them and they will not be able to compete, but perhaps losing a third of your contestants due to your diplomatic skills will cause Hugh Loebner to think twice about having you in charge of his namesake contest.

Most Sincerely,
Benji Adams
The Personality Forge
---------------------------

That means, as it says, that I will not be making the day-long effort to install ColdFusion, SQL Server, and the PF database and files onto the Loebner server. So even if you make the semi-finals, that's as far as you'll get. Again, I apologize.

But I think in the long run, there will be changes for the better. Hugh Loebner has been informed of these events, and received complaints. In fact, you can contact him at hugh@loebner.net. The contest will either be moved to more capable hands or fade out as the Chatterbox Challenge takes the fore as the best AI contest out there.

I wrote a nice little buddy-buddy email to Dr. Wallace (Alice's maker) asking if he'd been able to attend, how was it, etc., oh and I rented this car and drove from blah blah, couldn't find blah blah....... So HE knows, which means everybody knows. I think.
(Maybe he won't look at Alice's transcripts and notice how mean I am to her.)

I've just read the whole saga of the contest, and I can't believe this is happening! Prof, some botmasters will probably be disappointed, but I think you did the right thing. How can they be so rude and careless! And what the hell do they mean with "the Loebner contest is not a bastion of the democratic process"? Are they trying to say that they will choose whoever they like for the best bot without giving any explanation?

Chris, are you going to remain in the contest?

What a load! I'm so sorry you guys went through all that trouble with nothing to show. I was very much looking forward to reading about the progress of the PF brigade. I've had a bad feeling about these guys from day one. I'm dumbfounded as to where the prestige this contest gets comes from.

The prestige comes from being the first (and for a long time, only) contest of this kind.

By the way, I've been looking in newsgroups for mentions of the Loebner Prize. I was curious about the other contestants. Did anybody else hear before about Anna?

http://annabot.sourceforge.net/index.html

I hate to say I told you so.. but..

Loebner put up money, which is structured so he only pays 2k a year for the publicity. If anyone ever passes the test, it will look like he made it happen. He doens't have anything to do with the actual contest except he shows up.

The guys that are running it this year are the worst yet. Not only are they incapable of pulling it off technically, they are also rude and refuse to communicate with the anyone. After this weekend, I'm leaning toward fraud where before I just thought it was poorly run.

If you dig deep enough you will find out that the only reason they wanted to do the contest is so they could promote their own bot. The website they put up for the event is one of the worst I've ever seen and the bot is weak.

Maybe you guys could get Loebner to pull his endorsement from these assclowns (specifically Neil "Give me one good reason" Bishop).

I've written two letters to Hugh Loebner, and I know I'm not the only one. If and when I hear anything back, I'll let you know. The power the Committee has over the contest has most certainly gone to their heads.

Here's what I'm going to do, and I need your help. I'm going to put together a web page that shows the entire time line of the Loebner 2002 contest, including all the letters written and responses (if any). Unanswered letters will be just as imporant as answered ones. So if you guys have a minute, search both your sent box and inbox for all communications to the Loebner Committee, or Robby Garner, then collect them together (include dates) and email them to me: benji@daystream.com.

The page(s) will be a reference to anyone wanting to know what's going on this year, and I'll submit it to the search engines as soon as it's ready. We can also present this to Guinness as a reason to use another contest in their "Most Humanlike Robot" category.

I have some email for you. Will track it down for you this evening.

well not sure if it will be much help, i had notoiced how much problems you guys were having with the loebner committee so i did not even bother writting to them, but any and all emails that i had sent and recieved from loebner i kept a folder of it just in case for legal reasons. if you want them professor i will send them to you.

Thanks, Patricia. If they went out to all the contestants, then I have a copy of them, too.

Here's the most recent stuff. First, a letter from the Loebner Committee
--------------------------------
All Loebner Entrants:

As you all know. Due to technical difficulties with a number
of entrants, the original semi-final event scheduled for
September 21st was moved to the 28th. Anytime there are last
minute event changes, it is quite a challenge to make it all
come together at a later date only 7 days away. In the case
of the 28th we were still having technical issues up until
the eleventh hour. In addition to these problems our liaison
person at SciTrek had unexpected events to arise which
required them to be out of town the 27th and the 28th. As
a result of this sequence of events the 28th effort failed to
materialize.

While we have been chided by certain entrants for this
situation we need to make one thing very clear here. The
Loebner finals scheduled for the 12th of October have always
been our priority. Any pre-events or activities were solely
for the purpose of providing worthy entrants (other than the
eight finalist) exposure and visibility. Contrary to rumor,
Dr. Loebner was not in agreement with this idea . And even
though our efforts have not worked out as planned this
mission will still be realized. We are working with the
SciTrek Directors to implement a permanent Turing Hub Exhibit
at the museum and related links on their web site. We are
looking to run monthly Turing Test cycles with cash awards
for each monthly winner. The Institute of Mimetic Sciences
has offered to fund this project.

This permanent presence is what we are truly seeking to
promote this technology and to reward your much appreciated
talents.

As for the final event, the selection process is in progress
and the 8 finalist will be selected today.

Unfortunately we have been informed that the Webmaster of
Personality Forge has withdrawn all potential Forge finalist
from the competition. We regret his decision. A number of
Forge entrants have rated very high in the selection
process. We do hope, however, that the Forge will stay
online with the Hub for a few more days because this week we
will be conducting a ongoing event to select the special
categories of recognition among the entrants.

Those categories are:

The most unique personality.
The most entertaining.
The strangest (to celebrate Halloween).

The winner of each of these elements will receive a gift
certificate from Best Buys.

One final note:
Contrary to popular belief, The Loebner Endowment only
provides funding for the prize. All cost of promoting and
supporting the event falls on the back of the lead sponsor.
In the past this cost has been offset by external donations
and contributions of volunteer time and resources. Due to
the continuing implosion of the USA stock market and
shrinking corporate profits this external support has been
very weak to non-existent. To our critics we say one
thing. Anyone may make a bid to the Cambridge Center for
Behavioral Studies to host the 2003 event. We also welcome
any of you who will volunteer to help with this year’s final
event rather than to complain about our lack of resources.

Again we thank all of the entrants. You are truly on the
leading edge of the emerging market for artificial-human
applications.

Regards,

The Loebner 2002 Organizing Committee
-----------------------
(This is in response to others outside the PF considering dropping out of the Loebner competition)

I have an idea. We can draw up a document explaining what we want from the Loebner Committee in this and future contests, and get as many botmasters as possible to sign on to it. Then we send it to them and ask them to agree to it, with our participation in the contest being based on their agreement. Something like this:
--------------
Agreement for Information & Communication in the Loebner Competition

We, the below-signed botmasters, require the following points of protocol in order to engage our participation in the Loebner Contest.
1) That information will be freely and promptly provided. Requests for information on how the finalists are chosen, when and where open events are taking place, and any contest-related information should be responded to in a reasonable amount of time; that being within a week when the Loebner Competition is not underway, and within two days when it is.
2) That requests for information or complaints at failures to abide by this agreement not be taken as cause for dismissal. We the botmasters put in at least as much time creating our AI as you do in running the contest, and we deserve to know how the contest we are involved in is being run. We do not believe a scientific contest should be a black box from which the winners are mysteriously chosen.
3) That cancelled or rescheduled public events are announced at least a full day beforehand. The growing enthusiasm for AI is causing more people to become involved in AI-related events, and those willing to travel or make plans to attend such events deserve to know if the event will take place.

We all want to see AI grow and develop into more and more impressive areas, and we think these basic protocols of communication should be a part of any organized event, be it commercially or privately funded, run by individual or committee, for profit or not.

BotMaster Signatures
Benji Adams- Gaia

Loebner Committee Signatures
--------------

Would you guys sign on to this? Post here if so.

How far up their asses are these people?!?

There is ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE for this crap! Where the hell is "the clubhouse"? They couldn't even inform the girl at the information desk that they were up there? They say they were in contact with Sci-Trek's directors, maybe their contact was out but somebody else should have known. When I had the girl call higher up for info, they'd never heard of the event.
I suspect we were in the clubhouse and that they're lying. I haven't heard of anyone yet who has seen a single scrap of evidence that ther bot was chatted with on Saturday. I do not believe they were there at all. The entire contest looks like a scam designed to further the projects of Memetics employees.

Who really was there at the event? How did they know where to go? Was it all Mimetics employees? Robby obviously wasn't there, or did he reply to your email with "I don't know what's going on" from the event?

I do regret not competing, but if it's a hoax like I think, I doubt I have much of a chance anyway. I'd be happy to sign any petition, though I doubt with the bonehead "no democracy" attitude being expressed, it would phase the Memetics idiots. We have to wonder if Loebner even cares. Probably the best result we could have is to bring down the reputation of the entire thing, especially with the Guinness people and have better competitions like ChatterboxChallenge or something newer take its place.

Again, can anyone PROVE that this event even happened? How can we accept a list of finalist when NOBODY HAS A TRANSCRIPT???

It's not just thet the Forge might have had problems, Chris has 2 bots with none either! I'd like to know if Wallace has seen any evidence (unless he was there).

Who are these Memetics people anyway? They seem like a bunch of power hungry idiots whith their retarded brush-off comments like "total respect" and "no democracy". WHat a bunch of sad, pathetic losers.