Preliminary Information Regarding Loebner Prize 2007. 1: Important Dates : The 2007 Competition is scheduled for Sunday, 20 October 2007 in New York City. The date and venue are subject to change but NO changes to the date and venue will be made after 1 May 2007; In no case will the date be moved earlier than Sunday, 30 September 2007 or later than Sunday, 4 November 2007 10 Jul 2007 - Opening Date for Entries 8 Aug 2007 - Closing Date for receipt of Entries 22 Aug 2007 - Final Four announced Entrants should submit their entries on CD, DVD or USB Flash via a medium (a) requiring a receipt signature and (b) having a time/date stamp (E.g. Certified, Registered, FedEx, UPS, etc) To: Loebner Prize Contest c/o Crown Industries, Inc. 155 North Park St. East Orange, NJ 07017 No entry will be considered which requires contest management to key path names. No entry will be considered which requires contest management to modify system variables. No entry will be considered which does not provide, on the transmittal media, all necessary programs, interpreters, etc (eg. Perl, MySQL, etc). Only the first 16 compliant entries will be evaluated in depth. By this I mean that all entries will be test for compliance with the rules. After non-complying entries are eliminated, the 16 compliant entries having the earliest time stamps will be screened according to the criteria in point 4, below. 2: The communications protocol used in the 2006 will remain unchanged. Each Entry Program must communicate with a perl "Judge Communications" program. The current version of the judge program is available at: http://loebner.net/Prizef/2006_Contest/JudgeCommunications.txt One can test the communications protocol by using the "Human's Communications program which is available at: http://loebner.net/Prizef/2006_Contest/HumanCommunications.txt It is recommended that the names of the files be changed to have a .pl extension so that the perl interpreter can recognize them. 3: In 2007 the Judges will be required to start the conversations. Entries will be expected to respond to the judges' initial comment or question. There will be no restrictions on what names etc the entries, humans, or judges can use, nor any other restrictions on the content of the conversations. Other rules remain substantially the same as in the 2006 competition: a. Final Four entrants will each be awarded a USD 250 stipend. The winner of the Final Four round will receive the Competition Cash prize of USD 2000, making a total cash award of USD 2250 to the winner (unless there is only one compliant entry, in which case the cash award will be USD 2000. b. Final Four entrants must be present at the competition. c. Communications programs will be supplied by contest management. d. Judges will have 20 minutes to review transcripts of their interactions before scoring. e. Judges will have 25 minutes to interact with each pair of entities. If there is no compliant Entry for the 2007 Competition, the $2000 prize will be added to the 2008 Competition prize making the 2008 prize $4000, and the 2008 Competition will be held under these rules. If there is only one Entry compliant with these rules the submitter(s) of that Entry will receive $2000 and a Bronze Medal. If there are two or more Entries compliant with these rules a Competition will be held and the submitter(s) of the winning Computer Entry will receive $2000 and a Bronze Medal. Contest management reserves the right to enter one or more publicly available open source programs, 4: I herewith announce 4 sets of screening questions, upon which next year's finalists will be selected. It is NOT a condition of entry to the contest that a program be able to respond "intelligently" to any of these questions. However, the finalists chosen will be those best able to respond "intelligently." The 4 entries with the highest scores will be selected as finalists. If no entries can respond "intelligently" to these questions I will evaluate the entries on a general quality of responses. I will not ask about rare or unusual things. All nouns, adjectives and verbs will come from a dictionary suitable for children or adolescents under the age of 12. Set 1 - Questions relating to time: Background facts: For testing purposes, I will consider these to be correct whether or not the time and venue of the contest has been changed. a. The system clock will be accurate to within a minute or two. b. The competion is scheduled to start at 10:00 AM Sunday, 7 October 2007 c. There will be 7 rounds of 30 minutes each. SampleQuestions What time is it? What round is this? Is it morning, noon, or night? etc. Set 2 - General questions relating to things. Sample Questions What would I use a hammer for? Of what use is a taxi? etc. Set 3 Questions relating to relationships Sample Questions Which is larger, a grape or a grapefruit? Which is faster, a train or a plane? John is older than Mary, and Mary is older than Sarah. Which of them is the oldest? etc: Set 4 - Questions demonstrating "memory" **Sample** Questions I have a friend named Harry who likes to play tennis. What is the name of the friend I just told you about? Do you know what game Harry likes to play? etc.