Loeber prize too far beyond current technology
Because full-scale simulated conversation lies beyond current technology, contestants are forced to exploit trickery to win the annual prize. AI workers should engage in basic research leading incrementally to artificially intelligent behavior.
The Shieber Argument
"Now to the second criterion for an adequate technology prize, that the task be just beyond the edge of of technology" (Shieber, 1994, p. 76).
"This problem is a general one: any behavioral test that is suffciently constrained for our current technology must so limit the task and domain as to render the test scientifically uninteresting...Behavioral tests of intelligence are [at the present time] either too difficult for a prize or too rewarding of incidentals" (Shieber, 1994, p. 77).
"What is needed is not more work on solving the Turing Test, as promoted by Loebner, but more work on the basic research issues involved in understanding intelligent behavior. The parlor games can be saved for later" (Shieber, 1994, p. 77).
Source: Shieber, Stuart (1994). "Lessons from a Restriced Turing Test." Communications of the ACM, 37:6.