Richard Wallace, the artificial intelligence expert who has twice won the prestigious Loebner Prize in AI for his work on the ALICE chat robot, was served with a temporary restraining order, after the regents of the University of California alleged that he was "unstable" and had threatened Kenneth Goldberg, a UC Berkeley professor, with physical harm.
The restraining order, issued last Thursday, marks the latest development in the saga of Wallace's fight against what he sees as rampant "corruption" in academia. Wallace theorizes that several university professors, Goldberg included, are part of a criminal conspiracy to cover-up for New York University, which dismissed Wallace from its faculty in the early 1990s.
Wallace, who says he suffers from bipolar disorder and manic depression, has accused NYU of terminating him because he has a disability. But he says that he has not been able to find a lawyer who will take on his case against the university because NYU is "too powerful."
In his struggle against this power, Wallace has drafted a nine-page letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft urging Ashcroft to consider prosecuting NYU and perhaps others in academia under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, the law originally drafted to crush the Mafia. Wallace has not yet mailed the letter.
It was during Wallace's efforts to be a "whistleblower and an activist," as well as to obtain a settlement from NYU, that he began e-mailing Goldberg, a computer scientist with whom he has enjoyed a long friendship.
According to a complaint filed by Goldberg and the regents with the Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland, California, Wallace became increasingly dissatisfied that Goldberg was not taking "his side" in the case against NYU and instead remained a part of the "corrupt" academic world.
Over the course of many months, Wallace sent Goldberg e-mail messages in which Wallace "complained vehemently about the injustice that was done to him by these academic institutions," Goldberg states in the complaint.
Goldberg also says that Wallace told reporters that Goldberg was misusing federal funds and was smoking marijuana on the job. Wallace accused Goldberg of "protecting those criminal bastards" at NYU and said that Goldberg should lose his job at Berkeley.
In one message, Wallace said: "I have come to understand how people are driven to political violence ... when injustice has been done ... what other choice does (a person) have?"
Wallace told Goldberg that he planned to do some "political theater" by tacking "wanted posters" of Goldberg around the Berkeley campus that allege corruption.
Goldberg, who did not return calls for comment, writes in the complaint that he felt threatened by such messages.
But in an interview on Friday, Wallace said he was surprised that Goldberg should feel threatened by him. He denies accusing Goldberg of smoking marijuana. But he acknowledges sending all those messages and he says that none of them were threatening in any way.
Goldberg is "my really good friend of 20 years and I love the guy," Wallace said. "He should know better, that I'm a totally nonviolent activist."
Wallace also takes umbrage against Goldberg's suggestion that Wallace's mental illness renders him dangerous. "One of the biggest problems faced by mentally ill persons in our society is the prejudice in the media -- anytime there's a crime they will definitely say the killer had a history of mental illness," Wallace said. "So everyone thinks mentally ill people are violent. And what Goldberg is doing, that's bigotry."
Under the provisions of the temporary order, Wallace is barred from having any communications with Goldberg and from stepping on the Berkeley campus. He says he'll comply with the orders, and though he has no intention of going to Berkeley anytime soon or talking to Goldberg, he'll still fight the order at a hearing on June 20th.
Wallace says that his chief income is from social security, so he's looking for an attorney to represent him pro bono.
Whatever of the outcome of the case, Wallace said, the ALICE Project -- a free software AI project -- will not be affected.
