presents
The 1998 Loebner Prize Competition
with the assistance of
The University of Sydney
Macquarie University
The Microsoft Research Institute
The PowerHouse Museum
Entrants and Provisional list of Competitors
Six entries have been accepted for the 1998 Loebner Prize Competition
sponsored by Flinders University and hosted by the PowerHouse museum.
These entries have been accepted provisionally based on scripts
submitted. Some of these will be familiar to those who have been
following the competition, or who have been chatting with the Bots on
the Web.
The programs which these entrants submit will compete at the
PowerHouse Museum in Sydney on 11th January 1998 providing runnable
programs are received, or other arrangements satisfying the rules
are made. Programs should be received by 1st December 1997,
and a final list of competitors will be drawn up shortly after
that date. No modifications to or substitutions of the programs will
be accepted after 1st January 1998 and judges will be announced
shortly after this date: judges and confederates will be selected to be
representative of different walks of life, professions and relevant
specialities, and may include children, people with disabilities and/or
non-native speakers of English.
Entries are shown in the order received.
1 Name of Entrant: Joseph J. Strout
Affiliation: University of California San Diego
2 Name of Entrant: Robby Garner
Affiliation: Robitron Software Research, Inc.
3 Name of Entrant: Jason Hutchens and Bruce Cooper
Affiliation: University of Western Australia
4 Name of Entrant: Gerold Lee Gorman
Affiliation: Pinole Valley High School, Pinole CA (USA)
5 Name of Entrant: Dr. Richard S. Wallace
Affiliation: Eastport Internet Associates
6 Name of Entrant: Denis Cordier,Veronique Bastin
Affiliation: Notre Dame de la Paix, Namur/Flinders University
The Loebner Prize Turing Test competition will be held
in Sydney's PowerHouse Museum on Sunday 11th January, and the
combined NeMLaP and CoNLL conferences on New Methods in Language
Processing and Computational Natural Language Learning will be
held during the following week. The conference tutorial sessions
will be held in the Blue Mountains on Monday 12th and Tuesday
13th January, with the paper sessions being held on Thursday
15th to Saturday 17th January at Macquarie University.
A workshop on Human Computer Communication will held in association
with the competition on Sunday 11th January, and the NeMLaP/CoNLL
conferences with a paper session on Wednesday 14th January.
The invited speaker is Jason Hutchens of the University of Western
Australia, winner of the 1996 Loebner Prize and Bronze Medal,
and an entrant in the 1998 Loebner Prize Competition.
This provides a rare opportunity for NLP researchers to experience
the Loebner Prize competition first hand, and for competition
entrants, judges, confederates and officials to meet with researchers
for a workshop which will address a range of issues relating
to the Turing Test and the Loebner Prize. Demonstrations of
Human Computer Communication programs may be arranged in association
with the competition or the workshop.
For further details of the Australian Natural Language Processing
Fortnight and for workshop submission format and deadlines see:
http://www.cs.flinders.edu.au/research/AI/ANLPF/
http://www.cs.flinders.edu.au/research/AI/ANLPF/HCC.html
David Powers
Chairman Loebner Prize Committee
-- -- powers@acm.org http://www.cs.flinders.edu.au/people/DMWPowers.html Associate Professor David M. W. Powers David.Powers@flinders.edu.au ACM SIGART Editor, ACL SIGNLL ImPastPresident Facsimile: +61-8-8201-3626 Director, AI Lab, Dept of Computer Science UniOffice: +61-8-8201-3663 The Flinders University of South Australia Secretary: +61-8-8201-2662 GPO Box 2100, Adelaide South Australia 5001 HomePhone: +61-8-8357-4220