Can robots ‘think’ like humans?

It seems that it still is a long way to go until we are in a position to develop software that can act and interact in a way that is indistinguishable from human behavior. Last weekend, the  Loebner Prize 2008 Competition took place, and not a single bot has performed well enough to receive the golden medal. The problem originally stated by Turing is intriguing, as it requires numerous fields of computer science to integrate in a pro-active, communicative agent framework.

Although none of the bots performed well, a bot has been awarded the bronze model for convincing 3 out of 12 human judges that he is human. Check out the video about the Loebner Prize on BBC’s website (via Tim Finin).