University of Reading - Artificial intelligence tested

Will a machine be able to fool judges into thinking it is human? That is the question that will be posed at the University of Reading on 12 October when it hosts this year's Loebner Prize for Artificial Intelligence. Six "artificial conversational entities" are due to compete in a series of five-minute-long "Turing Tests" to determine if human judges perceive them as artificial. The tests are named after the famous British mathematician, Alan Turing, who claimed that if, during text-based conversation, a machine is indistinguishable from a human, then it could be said to be "thinking" and therefore considered to have intelligence. A symposium on the Turing Test will also be held to coincide with the event. In the competition's 17-year history, no entry has yet proven indistinguishable from a human.