According to Dr. Wallace’s post on Robitron:

“My unofficial 1st report from Exeter is that Bruce Wilcox and Suzette took the bronze medal at the LPC.

Zoe by Adeena Mignoga placed second.

Congratulations Bruce and Adeena and thanks to Mohan and Ron for a great contest.

Team Pandorabots was represented by Square Bear and Ron C. Lee.”

Correction: My new chatbot started recently is called Rosette—- though she responded to the pseudonym Jane in the contest. She should be up on the web in the next day or two. I’ll keep you posted.

Update from Exeter: 

There was a second round of judging where the judges were all 14 year old boys, a “Junior Loebner Prize Contest”
The results were:

1. & 2. Zoe and Tutor (tied)
3. Chip Vivant
4. Rosette

Congratulations Adeena and Ron!

This was the first time two finalists in the Loebner contest both used the same platform, Pandorabots.  Adeena, Ron, Steve, myself and our engineering staff all worked together to make it a team effort.  Go Team Pandorabots!

Congrats and well done to Bruce and Adeena! And thanks to Rich for the update. Any word on when the official results will be made public?

Rosette, my chatbot that won this year’s Loebner, can be viewed at:
http://labs.telltalegames.com/rosette.
It is close to that which was entered into the contest. Then she answered to the name of Jane and had a topic for why she was there at the Loebner’s, which has been removed. She is now back in san francisco.

That had to be the best conversation with a chatbot that I’ve ever had. Rosette strayed from the topic a time or two (read: she deliberately changed the subject when I told her that $300.00 was far too expensive for a simple dress), but all in all she did a fantastic job. Well done, Bruce. Well done, indeed!

That’s quite a good bot.  Hmm….things are moving forward….

hmm. Rosette seems determined to give me a personality trait test.  Is this intended behaviour?

Here’s my transcript:

Rosette: Good morning. My name is Rosette. What is your name?

You: Oliver

Rosette: Nice to meet you, oliver. May I call you oliver?

You: sure

Rosette: So, what do you do for a living?

You: I test chatbots

Rosette: Ready for a personality trait test?

You: no

Rosette: Ready for a personality trait test?

You: no

Rosette: Ready for a personality trait test?

You: no

Rosette: Ready for a personality trait test?

You: no

Rosette: Ready for a personality trait test?

You: no

Rosette: Ready for a personality trait test?

You: where are you?

Rosette: Ready for a personality trait test?

You: will you only accept yes as an answer?

Rosette: Ready for a personality trait test?

No. she should accept no.  I will go find and fix the bug. thanks.

I see your log entries, but I can’t replicate them. She always accepts a no from me. Maybe she was in a bad mood.
You can “restart” your relationship with her if you clear cookies from your browser. Your identity is a cookie that will expire in a month.

Sorry for my late replies, but congrats to the winners!!!!!!!

We’ll update our Loebner Prize pages asap (still looking for native English running reporters btw )

At Ntate John:

Are you really living in Lesotho? Wow! We haven’t got many members from that country . Feel welcome anyway!

Erwin,

Yep!  Have been living in Lesotho for the past 5+ years.  Part of my goal while in Lesotho is to bring the technology world more members from here

Thanks for the welcome, and thanks for taking away a lot of the time I used to spend coding and doing research (translation: there’s a lot of great activity going on here at chatbots.org!  i’ve just got to figure out a balance between reading what others here are doing and “doing my own doing!” )

Last month, we’ve had 8 visits from Lisotho. Lots of missionary work to do! Let me know if I can be of help

No worries, I guess your first name is ‘John’ or is it Ntate?

What would really help is to add Chatbots.org to a few leading directories in Lesotho. Do you have a Wikipedia clone over there? The more inlinks from a country, the more likely search engine will list Chatbots.org higher in your country.

Win win for both of us. We’d love to have more traffic from Lesotho (and make new friends to go on holiday too )

Unfortunately there aren’t many useful directories here in Lesotho (South Africa, which we are surrounded by, is a different case).  Outside of government websites and the websites of the few local I.T. firms here, there isn’t much originating from Lesotho (yet).

I’m working towards developing local interest in AI by demonstrating my own ongoing work, and presenting AI as a yet-to-be-conquered field… something even a small developing country like Lesotho has a chance of giving birth to!

Regards,
John

p.s. “Ntate” is the equivalent of “Mr” here (technically it means “Father”) and “Ntate John” is what is screamed when someone is having computer problems