This chapter discusses strategies for building a computer program to pose as a human for the Turing test, including the use of humor to distract the human judge from the task of evaluating the conversation. Experiences of computer programs from the Loebner Prize competitions are analyzed to give a “top 10” list of mistakes that computers make when trying to appear human.

The Information Age is fully upon us. A recent article noted that there are perhaps 50 million people using the Internet on a regular basis, and That “the current growth rate is about 15% per month (!) and this could well continue until almost all of those in the ‘developed world’ are connected” [FM94, p. 30]. In addition, the digital domain consists not only of text but increasingly of other media representations, from graphics images to audio to motion video. As the amount of information and number of users exponentially escalate, more attention focuses on the basic problems of information management: How do you digitize information? How can you then visualize it and find what you need? How do you use and manipulate it effectively? How is it stored and managed? The proliferation of technical articles and special issues addressing these questions underscore their importance; see for example the special issue on Content-based retrieval [Nar95] or digital libraries [F+95]. This chapter will survey some of that work, especially that which relates to the treatment of video and the use of digital video libraries For education.

The Informedia Digital Video Library Project is developing new technologies for creating full-content search and retrieval digital video libraries. Working in collaboration with WQED Pittsburgh, the project is creating a testbed that will enable K-12 students to access, explore, and retrieve science and mathematics materials from the digital video library. The library will initially contain 1,000 hours of video from the archives of project partners: WQED, Fairfax Co. VA Schools' Electronic BBC-produced video courses. (Industrial partners include Digital Equipment Corp., Bell Atlantic, Intel Corp., and Microsoft, Inc.) This library will be installed at Winchester Thurston School, an independent K-12 school in Pittsburgh.

The Turing Test was proposed by Alan Turing in 1950; he called it the Imitation Game. In 1991 Hugh Loebner started the Loebner Prize competition, offering a $100,000 prize to the author of the first computer program to pass an unrestricted Turing test. Annual competitions are held each year with smaller prizes for the best program on a restricted Turing test. This paper describes the development of one such Turing System, including the technical design of the program and its performance on the first three Loebner Prize competitions. We also discuss the program's four year development effort, which has depended heavily on constant interaction with people on the Internet via Tinymuds (multiuser network communication servers). Finally, we discuss the design of the Loebner competition itself, and address its usefulness in furthering the development of Artificial Intelligence.