Don Patrick - Sep 26, 2017:

they basically have a 10 year head start on newcoming developers

Isn’t that a bit like saying Michael Phelps has a 10-year lead in swimming, so why bother training for the Olympics?

One universal truth about all fields of human competition is that the current generation of champions will get old and tired, and new generations will rise to succeed them.

I for one think we should all eschew any negativity about the Loebner Prize, and do what we can to see the tradition of this oldest, first, longest-running real-world Turing Test continue, if for no other reason than to honor Hugh’s wish that we do so.

Professor Wallace has a point all contestants may identify with. Whoever enters, is practically forced to gain major A.I. improvements in the process of competing.  For example, this year Dave Morton created a portable PHP, JavaScript, C++ web server thumbdrive. To put that in perspective, to accomplish less than that, Google built the massive Chrome v8 JavaScript engine Project.

Comparing me to Google, 8pla? I’m honored!

I really think that I should see about splitting this thread, but I’m still unpacking and my main computer isn’t running yet, so I really don’t have the time to do so. I’m in agreement with Dr. Wallace, in that we should avoid/ignore any negativity related to the competition and continue pressing forward to continue improving and evolving our bots through competition. In some ways I wish I could move to England so as to take a more active role in the Loebner Prize, but that’s not going to happen any time soon, so I’ll just try to do what I can from here.

“they basically have a 10 year head start on newcoming developers”

The same was true when I first entered the competition. THe competitors were all many year ones. Obviously didn’t stop me from winning a bunch.