Lessons from a restricted Turing test

Abstract

We report on the recent Loebner prize competition inspired by Turing'stest of intelligent behavior. The presentation covers the structure of thecompetition and the outcome of its first instantiation in an actual event,and an analysis of the purpose, design, and appropriateness of such acompetition. We argue that the competition has no clear purpose, thatits design prevents any useful outcome, and that such a competition isinappropriate given the current level of technology. We then...