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The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine's capability to perform human-like conversation. Described by Alan Turing in the 1950 paper "Computing machinery and intelligence", it proceeds as follows: a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with two other parties, one a human and the other a machine; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said to pass the test. It is assumed that both the human and the machine try to appear human. In order to keep the test setting simple and universal (to explicitly test the linguistic capability of the machine instead of its ability to render words into audio), the conversation is usually limited to a text-only channel such as a teletype machine as Turing suggested or, more recently IRC or instant messaging.

History


The test was inspired by a party game known as the "Imitation Game", in which a man and a woman go into separate rooms, and guests try to tell them apart by writing a series of questions and reading the typewritten answers sent back. In this game, both the man and the woman aim to convince the guests that they are the woman. Turing proposed a test employing the imitation game as follows: "We now ask the question, 'What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?' Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, 'Can machines think?'" (Turing 1950) Later in the paper he suggested an "equivalent" alternate formulation involving a judge conversing only with a computer and a man.

Turing originally proposed the test in order to replace the emotionally charged and (for him) meaningless question "Can machines think?" with a more well-defined one. The advantage of the new question, he said, was that it "drew a fairly sharp line between the physical and intellectual capacities of a man." (Turing 1950)

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Chatterbots :: Natural Language
Philosophy :: Artificial Intelligence
Cognitive Science :: Social Sciences
Philosophy of Mind :: Philosophy

 
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@snipeyhead Agree! If your stream could be easily automated, you fail the Turing Test. Also hate the nonstop "frou frou" leadership stuff.
rickbert (Rick Cochrane) Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:50:15 -0000
@snipeyhead Agree! If your stream could be easily automated, you fail the Turing Test. Also hate the nonstop "frou frou" leadership stuff.
Ыххыхы сделал себе список @bookazoid_tw/turing-test буду коллекционировать роботов, всю жизнь мечтал же.
bookazoid_tw (bookazoid_tw) Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:18:12 -0000
Ыххыхы сделал себе список @bookazoid_tw/turing-test буду коллекционировать роботов, всю жизнь мечтал же.
Hinky: I think I just flunked my Turing test. : (
BOTHOUSE (BOT House) Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:34:48 -0000
Hinky: I think I just flunked my Turing test. : (
Those squiggly letters are called CAPTCHA: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
ejmdesigns (Eric Marschall SEM) Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:32:55 -0000
Those squiggly letters are called CAPTCHA: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
Bots searching tweets for key words don't really 'get' folk like me who patently just talk bollocks. I feel like a walking Turing test.
magnetite (magnetite magnetite) Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:27:36 -0000
Bots searching tweets for key words don't really 'get' folk like me who patently just talk bollocks. I feel like a walking Turing test.
@GadgetVirtuoso Ok, let's put it this way: did the sender of that instant message pass the Turing test?
jkniiv (Jarkko Kniivilä) Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:28:27 -0000
@GadgetVirtuoso Ok, let's put it this way: did the sender of that instant message pass the Turing test?

 
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Article in ACM Crossroads Magazine - Published in Crossroads, the ACM student magazine, this is an article arguing that the Turing Test is not a good test for intelligence.

Computing Machinery and Intelligence - Turing's original 1950 article on machine intelligence, where he introduces the famous Turing Test, and started this profound multi-decade debate.
Meta Description: [ original article by Alan Turing on machine intelligence, where he introduces the famous Turing test. ]

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The Turing Test - Article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

The Turing Test and Chinese Room Experiment - A nice, concise page by Larry Hauser describing the Turing Test and Searle's Chinese Room.

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Turing test and intelligence - This document examines the meaning of the Turing test and suggests that meeting the turing test is already in the process of being achieved.
Meta Description: [ clarifying the meaning of the turing test, suggesting that meeting the turing test is already in the process of being achieved. ]

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Meta Description: [ Turing Test ]

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