How To Be Human

If this year’s winner of the Loebner Prize is on the right track, call-center data could be what’s needed to achieve the ultimate goal of artificial intelligence (AI): creating a computer program smart enough to hold a natural conversation.

A self-trained enthusiast with no formal academic background in AI, Rollo Carpenter created the winning program, which learns by analyzing its conversations with people as they “chat” with it online. Regardless of the language, his program analyzes every utterance it witnesses, using what Carpenter calls contextual pattern-recognition techniques. Then, when a user asks the program a question, a database is combed for the best response, statistically speaking.

1. Loebner Prize - The Loebner Prize is an annual competition in artificial intelligence that awards prizes to the computer programs considered by the judges to be the most human-like.

2. Artificial Intelligence - Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, as opposed to the natural intelligence displayed by animals and humans.