Fire ze missiles!

In January, the developer of DEFCON, the much celebrated Introversion Software announced that they were seeking academics to assist in development of the world's most intelligent and destructive DEFCON bot, one which would ultimately have one goal, destroy the world and all its inhabitants using the most devastating weapon developed in the history of man - the nuclear bomb.

Introversion have just gained some level of recognition for their work with academic community, with DEFCON having been selected for use in an annual international symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games, which will be held this year at the Politecnico di Milano, the largest technical university in Italy.

The symposium will see a panel of expert judges assess several DEFCON bots on many qualities, ultimately seeking to find one that is "realistic enough" to fool the judges that it is human. The test has been dubbed the "Turing Test for Bots".

The competition follows the work that we first reported in January, with the bot API having been developed with the intention of allowing anyone to produce their very own lovable bot that has but one goal - destroy the world. In September, talented programmers who have developed the bots will see their creations fight one another over thirty matches, with the deadliest DEFCON bot to receive a prize of $500.

Competition organisers hope that the technology developed for the contest doesn't fall into the wrong hands. In actual fact, this writer believes that they should be worried that the programmer doesn't fall into the wrong hands.