I do not identify as a gamer, but in 2013, I was asked to help make a game, and I said yes. I said yes, because I am a lover of Alan Turing, and of reading. The game we created was for UC Berkeley’s On the Same Page Program in partnership with the Berkeley Center for New Media. I was hired as Lead Concept and Project Manager, based on my work in the San Francisco Jail implementing feminist based digital storytelling. I worked with director Berkeley Center for New Media professor and new media artist Greg Niemeyer, and a team of BCNM graduate and undergraduate artists, humanists, and technologists. The game was inspired by the On the Same Page Program’s selected reading of Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe by science historian George Dyson. The Turing Test Tournament provides an interactive engagement with the strange and fascinating history of the digital electronic computer.
Launched in August 2013, the Turing Test Tournament was the UC Berkeley chat-based version of Alan Turing’s famous game for machine intelligence.
Fostering interaction and performance, thousands of Berkeley students, faculty, and staff were able to engage with the Turing Test Tournament in an online contest. Players try to figure out human from machine through chat-based competition and determine how convincingly a role is performed. While created for the incoming class of 2013, anyone with an @berkeley.edu email address could play the Turing Test Tournament. We also organized chatscript hackathons, and for the game playing, a cash prize of $1,000 went to a winner, who then chose a UC Berkeley organization. The first winner student Brianna Grado-White chose the organization The Society of Women in Science. Please see below for the full press release and images of the process of making The Turing Tournament.
Please visit: http://ttt.berkeley.edu/
The Turing Test Tournament is a new online chat game for UC Berkeley’s incoming class of 2013 co-developed by BCNM professor and new media artist Greg Niemeyer and a team of BCNM graduate and undergraduate artists, humanists, and technologists. I worked as Lead Concept and Project manager for the Turing Test Tournament.
Launched in August 2013, the Turing Test Tournament is the UC Berkeley chat-based version of Alan Turing’s famous test for machine intelligence. The Turing Test Tournament was developed for UC Berkeley’s On the Same Page Program in partnership with the Berkeley Center for New Media. Inspired by On the Same Page Program’s selected reading of Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe by science historian George Dyson, the Turing Test Tournament provides an interactive engagement with the strange and fascinating history of the digital electronic computer.
Fostering interaction and performance, thousands of Berkeley students, faculty, and staff are able to engage with the Turing Test Tournament in an online contest. Players try to figure out human from machine through chat-based competition and determine how convincingly a role is performed. While created for the incoming class of 2013, anyone with an @berkeley.edu email address can play the Turing Test Tournament.
The Turing Test Tournament Team includes:
Greg Niemeyer, Project Director, Professor for New Media and Director, BCNM
Elizabeth Keegan, Lead Game Designer
Jacy Wu, Lead UI/UX
Nathaniel Mailoa, Web Design CSS Lead
Dibyo Majumdar, Lead, AI Development
Gaurav Garg, AI Development
Danielle Alojado, Artist
Art Siriwatt, Marketing
Lenna Nguyen, Artist
Margaret Rhee, Lead Concept and Project Manager
Chris Geotz, Concept and Consultant
Nora Liddell, Project Coordinator/Manager, BCNM
Kiera Chase, Research Associate
Alix Schwartz, Director, On the Same Page, and Project Patron
Rita Hao, Legal Counsel, UCOP
For more information, please visit:
Video of our game making process included in the video on On the Same Page 2013
VIsit On the Same Page Program for more information
Margaret Rhee 