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Our Ron Lee Wins Second Place in the 2018 Loebner Prize Contest
11/09/2018

Julius Pañares
The Loebner Prize Contest is the oldest Turing Test, which is named after Alan Turing, a famous English computer scientist who worked as a codebreaker in World War 2.  This  annual competition chooses the most human computer of the year. This year Ron Lee's chatbot "Tu...
The Loebner Prize Contest is the oldest Turing Test, which is named after Alan Turing, a famous English computer scientist who worked as a codebreaker in World War 2.  This  annual competition chooses the most human computer of the year. This year Ron Lee's chatbot "Tutor" won second place in the Loebner Prize final contest held on September 8, 2018 at Bletchley Park, UK.

"Tutor" was originally created by Ron Lee to help his students practice English. You can visit the tutor at https://www.rong-chang.com/tutor_mike.htm
After so many years, "Tutor" has become very popular among English learners throughout the world. The weekly access has reached 20,000. Ron Lee's goal is to create a teaching assistant for English instructors. "Tutor" can now answer grammar questions, and correct some typical ESL students' mistakes.

Ron Lee is now working with professors from University of Illinois at Chicago to enable "Tutor" to use a knowledge database "Freebase" or "ConceptNet" in chatting, and add the new knowledge learned by "Tutor" to the knowledge base. This is an exciting project. We are looking forward to seeing the application of Artificial Intelligence in our language learning field. Let's congratulate Ron for this wonderful achievement.

Update on Ron Lee- Not only does he sponsor the technology award for CATESOL, (visit how to apply for this award at http://www.catesolfoundation.org/), but now he is also sponsoring an award for TESOL members. (apply for this award at https://www.tesol.org/enhance-your-career/tesol-awards-honors-grants/tesol-awards-for-excellence-service/ron-chang-lee-award-for-excellence-in-call).

Thank you Ron Lee for all you do for this profession in promoting the use of technology.