🚀 go-pugleaf

The 1998 Loebner Prize for Artificial Intelligence, will take place at the 
Powerhouse Museum on Sunday 11 January, 1998 in the 300-seat Coles Theatre. 
This is the first time that this internationally prestigious competition has 
been held outside the United States.  Dr Hugh Gene Loebner, after whom the 
Prize is named, agreed in 1990 with The Cambridge Centre for Behavioural 
Studies to underwrite the contest, pledging a Grand Prize of US$100,000 to 
developer of computer whose responses could not be distinguished from that 
of a human's.

The Loebner Prize is the first formal instigation of a Turing Test, named 
after the distinguished British mathematician Alan Turing.  In 1950, Turing 
asked the question "Can a Machine Think?" in the philosophical journal Mind. 
He answered in the affirmative, but a central question was: "If a computer 
could think, how could we tell?" Turing's suggestion was that if the responses 
from the computer were indistinguishable from that of a human, the computer 
could be said to be thinking!

Numerous Australian university and private AI research organisations are 
acknowledged to be amongst the best in the world, and the 1996 Loebner Prize 
was won by the University of Western Australia's Centre for Intelligent 
Information Processing.

Members of the Australian Computer Society interested in attending the 
competition can book seats by contacting Kevin Sumption, Curator Information 
Technology, Powerhouse Museum, at kevins@phm.gov.au. or telephone 9217 0203.