11. Judges will be selected by the Institute for Mimetic Sciences in consultation with the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies and may include children, people with disabilities, experts in Psychology, Linguistics or Artificial Intelligence, etc and are intended to be in part representative of the community at large and part of the scientific community.

12. It is the task of the Computer Entries to respond to the communications of the Judges in such a manner as to imitate the responses of a human. No constraints will be placed on the Judges', Human Confederates' or Contestants' conversations. However, the Competition is widely publicized, the transcripts will be published, and all Contestants must assume responsibility for their own Computer Entries. As in any normal conversation, both participants have a role in determining the direction of the conversation and are free to decide what topics they do or do not wish to discuss. Computer Entries must be prepared to communicate for an indefinite period of time.

13. Judges will have one or more opportunities to interact with each of the Computer Entries [on the computer terminals available concurrently] during the Competition. Judges will be allowed unrestricted communications. They will be informed that at least one of the [terminals] is controlled by Human Confederates and that at least two of the [terminals] are controlled by Computer Entries [or re-word for sequential format with only one terminal].

14. One or more referees may be present to limit communications of the Human Confederates.

15. Judges will not be allowed to interact with each other and will be instructed to provide individual ratings of each of the appropriateness and responsiveness of the replies.

16. Computer Entries must communicate in the English language.

17. Computer Entries may contain standard or customized software and hardware. The system may be of any type as long as it contains no genetic material and as long as its replies are in no manner controlled by human beings or other organic systems in real time.

18. Entries will be required to run on hardware located at the Institute for Mimetic Sciences or an alternative competition site or an associated site. No telecommunications will be permitted. Finalists chosen to participate may submit their Computer Entries as programs recorded on standard machine-readable media (magnetic or optical storage) together with operating documentation. Macintosh, DOS/Windows and Unix computers with standard mass storage peripherals will be available on-site for the contest. Efforts will be made to secure the use of other standard equipment as required, but this cannot be guaranteed. Where appropriate hardware cannot be provided by the organizers, Entrants will be required to provide the hardware for operation at an agreed site. The Institute for Mimetic Sciences personnel will be available to operate the Computer Entries according to documentation provided by the Contestant.