I checked out Loebner's Web site. It was cheesy, poorly laid out, and surprisingly light in content. Somehow I had expected more pizzazz from somebody aggressively pushing the limits of computer intelligence. I had not known, before visiting his site, that his favorite political causes are the legalization of prostitution and setting the record straight about the Olympics' so-called gold medals. (They're actually gold-plated silver, it turns out, so they should be called "gilt" medals.)
I found myself in agreement with Loebner on both of those issues, and I respected his being an "out and proud" john, that is, someone who pays for sex with prostitutes. On the other hand, being neither an Olympic athlete nor a patron of sex workers, I didn't find myself especially worked up about either topic. I was about to surf someplace else and forget all about this self-proclaimed gadfly. But then I read about his spat with Marvin Minsky, and I knew I had to talk to this guy.
I first spoke with Loebner last November. I wanted to find out about his prize, but mostly I wanted to ask him about his public virtual spitball fight with Minsky.
I was a little nervous in calling him, because being a reporter doesn't come easy to me -- I've never been good at taking notes. I was a little taken aback, then, that he didn't remember who I was or that we had set up an appointment, and that he was evidently taking my call on the manufacturing floor of his company, Crown Industries of East Orange, N.J. -- a maker of stanchions and ropes (used by banks to keep their customers in line), brass rails and fittings, bellman's carts, pedestal tables, folding table legs, and roll-up illuminated disco floors. People were loudly speaking in the background and things were clanging, and a couple of times it sounded as though he had put his hand over the phone and was giving directives while I was speaking to him. Several times he forgot what I had asked him. Like King George, he tended to say "What? What?" I would repeat my question and he would say, "Oh yes. Oh yes. Minsky. Quite the story. Quite." So much for the Bill Moyers thing.
Loebner talks very, very fast. And he doesn't seem to pay much attention to what you're saying. Nevertheless I found him pleasant and interesting. He speaks with the candor of a child, and sometimes uses a child's language. For example, I asked him how he had decided to put up such a large sum of money to endow his prize.
"I wanted to draw attention to the Turing test," he said. "I thought it was about time that somebody did. Daddy didn't want to, but Daddy died. So I put up the money."
That's one of the few verbatim quotes I have from our first conversation. My note-taking skills were no match for his output.
Loebner has many enthusiasms. He likes prostitutes. He likes marijuana. He likes pornography. He likes the Loebner Prize. He likes wine and fine paintings. And he likes Hugh Loebner. He spoke enthusiastically about all those things. But I was surprised to learn that he didn't seem to care much about artificial intelligence, per se.
His interest in the field has always been pragmatic, he told me, never philosophical. He's a hedonist who thinks work is an abomination and sloth is our greatest virtue. He got interested in A.I. because he hoped the day would come when robots and A.I.'s could do all the work and people could play all the time. I asked him about the current state of A.I. research. Well, he said, some progress was evidently being made in the area of "decision support" systems, but that didn't really interest him too much. What about the quality of entrants in his competition? "Pretty gruesome," he said. "Gruesome."
I was surprised to learn that he had not even read the transcripts of the prior year's competition. He didn't very much care for chatting with the bots himself; they were too stupid.
I was also surprised at how open Loebner was about his emotions. He laughed a lot and yet he told me, after we had spoken for perhaps a minute, that he was deeply depressed about his prize, that he had not slept at all for the previous two nights from worrying about it. He spoke to me, after knowing me for 60 seconds by phone, in a way that I would only speak to my closest confidants. He was in dark despair, he told me.
What was troubling him was that it was November 2002 and the Cambridge Center had not yet announced the date and venue for the 2003 contest. Loebner had just instructed his attorney to tell the center that if it did not make an announcement by Jan. 2, 2003, he would sue to get his money back and thereafter administer the prize himself. He seemed genuinely anguished by the prospect of going to court, but resolute.
When he had made the gift to the Cambridge Center he attached only three strings, he said: that the Loebner contest be conducted every year, that a prize be given every year, as long as there was at least one entrant, and that the rules by which the contest was run be acceptable to Loebner and to the Cambridge Center. Now he was suspicious that the center, because it had not announced the next year's competition, was leaving open the possibility that no contest would be held. This prospect drove him nuts. As far as he was concerned, if the Cambridge Center could not find a suitable organization to conduct the contest, then the center's staff should conduct it themselves.
The job of organizing and conducting the contest was trivial, he said. "It's a very simple concept. One person could do it without headwind." If it so transpired that organizing the contest fell to him, he said, he would probably just conduct it in his New York City apartment. The important thing was that the contest happen, not where it happened or who sponsored it.
If one thing makes Loebner see red, it's the idea that his contest will not be held every year. "On this point I have been stalwart," he said. "I have been adamant. I have been steadfast." And then he offered to send me copies of recent and pending letters between his lawyers and the center's.
The more he told me of his simmering argument with the Cambridge Center, the more I felt myself being handed a mini Mike Wallace-style story, which made me uncomfortable. "Why are you telling me all this?" I asked him. "I'm a reporter. Do you really want me to write a story 'Eccentric Philanthropist Set to Sue His Own Contest'? Won't that just make matters worse for you?"
"Sure," he said. "But go ahead. Write it. Stir things up. Let's see what happens."
And then we talked about the whole Minsky episode.
Next page: When artificial intelligence researchers get mean