For the first time the competition was held at Bletchley Park (Saturday 15 November), in conjunction with AISB, where Alan Turing led Britain’s code-breaking efforts during World War Two.

The Loebner Prize is based on the Turing Test, one of the biggest challenges in the world of artificial intelligence. The test was proposed by Alan Turing in his famous 1950 paper entitled Computing Machinery and Intelligence, as a way of determining whether a computer program could be said to be intelligent.

The competition, the oldest Turing Test contest was started in 1991 by Hugh Loebner and the Cambridge Centre for Behavioural Studies.

For over two hours, judges at the competition conducted conversations with the four finalist chatbots and with some human surrogates and then ranked all their conversation partners from most humanlike to least humanlike. The chatbot with the highest overall ranking won first prize.

‘Rose’ by Bruce Wilcox was declared the winner and received a cheque for $4000 and a bronze medal.

Dr Sant said: “It was a privilege for the University to be involved with Loebner Prize as well as a personal honour to be a judge. The standard of the finalists was amazing and ‘Rose’ was a worthy winner.”

Dr Ghita Kouadri-Mostefaoui, Lecturer in Computer Science and Technology, University of Bedfordshire was also a judge together with Dr Ian Hocking, Writer & Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Christ Church College, Canterbury.

The University also provided computers and networking equipment for the competition.

Finalists

• Rose - Rank 1 ($4000 & Bronze Medal)
• Izar - Rank 2.25 ($1500)
• Uberbot - Rank 3.25 ($1000)
• Mitsuku - Rank 3.5 ($500)