We had a great day out at the University of Surrey/Digital World Research Centre's Colloquium on Conversational Systems - otherwise known as Alice's 10th Birthday party. Alice was the original chatbot developed using the AIML language that now sits at the core of our chatbot implementations. The event was a great opportunity to meet such AI luminaries as Dr Rich Wallace (inventor of AIML and ALICE), Hugh Loebner (founder of the Loebner Prize - the current Turing test - although we upset him by takig about the Internet!), and Rob Garner and Rollo Carpenter - past Loebner winners. Really ought to become an annual event.
