Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro (gps0@gte.com) was at the Boston Computer Museum 11/8/91. He reports that the ten topics were: 1) women's clothing, 2) Smalltalk, 3) 2nd grade elementary school, 4) Shakespeare, 5) whimsical conversation, 6) fishing, 7) advice in romantic situations, 8) burgundy wine, 9) jazz, and 10) dry martinis. About 130 programs "applied" to compete, but no more than eight were selected. Judges were to rank-order the contestants after 14 minutes with each. At the event, Fishing and Jazz dropped out due to technical difficulties. Others were immediately identifiable as computers by their errors or speed. When 2nd Grade School was asked "which things you prefer at school", the reply was "Today is Friday, November 8". Burgundy started by printing "O1#V!5KD;D.." and could not deal with "Why do you prefer red wines over white?" Only Women's Clothing and Shakespeare gave responsive answers.

Whimsical Conversation was the only difficult choice, as its "dialogue" consisted of jokes and psychobabble: "You're cute ... would you like to fool around for a little? How important is that to you? Can you believe this crazy competition?" Gregory was not impressed, but five of the ten judges thought it was human! Joseph Weintraub, president of Thinking Software (Woodside, NY), received a bronze medal and $1500 prize for writing the program. (A grand prize of $100,000 has been provided by Hugh Loebner, a NY businessman.) A detailed report will appear in the January Scientific American. [comp.ai, 11/22.]