Two unreal bots are more human than many people

The judges were wrong and rated two bots in the game Unreal Tournament 2004 as more human than most human players.

But that was exactly the aim of this unusual competition, which was held for the fifth time.

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In the fifth year of the 2K Botprize, two teams succeeded in convincing the jurors that their bots act humanly. The bots and the human player’s duels in the competition in a modified deathmatch from Unreal Tournament 2004.

Mihai Polceanu’s Mirrorbot achieved a humanity value of 52.2 percent, almost as much as the best human player with 53.3 percent.

The judges observed the game and regularly “tagged” the bots and players either as machines or as humans. Just behind the Mirrorbot was the UT ^ 2 from the University of Texas at Austin with 51.9 percent humanity.

The UT ^ 2 team has been trying to convince the jurors of the humanity of their own bot since the first competition.

So far, the team has failed every time. In 2010 it only reached a little over 27 percent of humanity, in 2011 the result was even reduced to around 21 percent.

In the overall picture, however, there was still a correct classification. The human players achieved an average humanity of 41.4 percent, while the bots were only 34.2 percent.

Interestingly, two players were surprisingly often classified as bots: John Weise and Chris Holme only convinced the jurors of their humanity in 30.8 and 26.3 percent of the cases, respectively.

The two winning bots were significantly above this value. The two winning teams shared the US $ 7,000 prize.

The results of the competition have been published on the botprize.org website.

Three short videos with a text explanation of the competition were also published.

The bot can be distracted by fighting, for example, in order to appear more human.

For the tournament, the opportunity to chat with one another was switched off in order to convince the jurors of humanity only through their playful skills.

Those interested can download the University of Texas UT ^ 2 bot. Mihai Polceanu’s bot is not available for download.