The annual Loebner Prize in Artificial Intelligence is taking place
Judges carry out simultaneous conversations with both a chatbot and a human
They have to try to work out which is a computer program and which a person
An award is given to the most human-like bot entered
If a bot fools half the judges it will win a grand prize of $100,000 and the competition will be discontinued
Email: talkingpoint@bbc.co.uk
John Griffith emails:
You can distinguish between the bots and the humans due to the fact that the judge-human conversation builds up a common context, which they build and refer back to as they go along. The bots seems to maintain zero context.
Rory looked positively exhausted - and relieved - as the final fourth round ended.
Rory sighs as the contest ends
Use the hashtag #intelligentmachines or tweet us at @bbctech
Academic and nurse tweets:
Jane Wakefield
Technology reporter
The judges are busy ranking each of the conversations they had. The results will be announced shortly.
Email: talkingpoint@bbc.co.uk
Lee Zhao:
Seems to me the biggest flaw in most of the chat bots is they have too perfect punctuation and grammar. In this age of instant messaging, email, and Twitter humans don't really bother with much punctuation any more. Most of these bots seem to be chatting far too formally.
Jane Wakefield
Technology reporter
Jenny Abbot was watching the action unfold here at Bletchley.
She came to support her partner who was one of the humans chatting to the judges.
She was trying to work out whether he was talking to Rory in the last round.
"They are talking about gardening and he doesn't garden so I don't think it is him," she said.
She isn't entirely convinced that she can tell which of the chats is a bot and is surprised at how much personality they seem to have.
Jenny Abbot
And that is the end of that.
The judges now have to say who they think the bots are.
The malfunction seems to have cleared itself up and Rory is back to asking that all important question:
Are they a fan of the Great British Bake Off.
Image source, PAAnd how very different the answers were.
One said "yes I really enjoy it".
The other, after some persistent questioning, answered "I sometimes question what it is to be a human".
Rory briefly faced a technical glitch during the last round:
AI does not compute: Rory faces problems in the final round of the Loebner Prize.
Use the hashtag #intelligentmachines or tweet us at @bbctech
AIML developer and Loebner Prize winner 2013
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David Levy's chatbot came out on top in a previous year.
He tells Smitha Mundasad in the video below what you need to do to win:
AI expert David Levy explains what the bots need to do to win
Judges are sitting down for the final round of the Loebner prize.
This is their last chance to detect the bot.
It looks like Rory thinks he's spotted the human in the last round.
He suggested a team-up to demand cake.
Meanwhile he talked about the merits of owning his dog Cabbage over having a pet budgie on the other side.
(His dog is his second favourite subject after bread)
Oh... Rory's started talking about bread on both his chats - his favourite subject.
The chatbots are lucky to get a word in...
Rory seems to want to see if anyone, human or bot, knows how to get rid of the slugs in his garden.
We're not sure if this is a strategy to spot a bot or whether he really just wants to solve the problem.
One respondent suggested he take up slug farming instead of gardening.
Just as well we know Rory's really there or we might suspect he's a bot:
R: What do you do for a living?
A: I’m a software engineer
R: Yes but what about your favourite pub?
A: That’s a bit of a jump from the previous question
R: Sorry I meant to ask the other guy that!
A: No worries. I’m quite glad to only have one conversation to focus on at once.
Rory Cellan-Jones
Technology correspondent
It's half-way through and so far it's been a lot easier to spot the bot than I imagined.
In fact it is quite hard work keeping a conversation going for 25 minutes once you've realised it is a robot at the other end.