How to Create a Bot
Simone Natale · 2021
Abstract In 1991, American inventor and philanthropist Hugh Loebner funded the launch of a competition aimed at recreating the conditions of the Turing test to assess the success of conversational programs in passing as human. The Loebner Prize competition has been conducted every year since then. This chapter looks at the history of this competition in order to argue that it has functioned as a proving ground for AI’s ability to deceive humans and as a form of spectacle highlighting the potential of computing technologies. The staged confrontations between computers and humans provide a context where humans’ liability for deception and its implications for natural language programs were systematically put to test in a competitive framework. This encouraged programmers to develop strategies and tricks that are reemerging today in communicative AI technologies. Thus, the case of the Loebner Prize helps one better understand Alexa, Siri, and other AI voice assistants that are becoming increasingly widespread in contemporary societies.