Turing Test

Computer Science An Overview _J. Glenn Brookshear _11th Edition

In the past the Turing test (proposed by Alan Turing in 1950) has served as a

benchmark in measuring progress in the field of artificial intelligence. Today

the significance of the Turing test has faded although it remains an important

part of the artificial intelligence folklore. Turing’s proposal was to allow a

human, whom we call the interrogator, to communicate with a test subject by

means of a typewriter system without being told whether the test subject was a

human or a machine. In this environment, a machine would be declared to

behave intelligently if the interrogator was not able to distinguish it from a

human. Turing predicted that by the year 2000 machines would have a 30 per-

cent chance of passing a five-minute Turing test—a conjecture that turned out

to be surprisingly accurate.