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 Turing
Test
"I propose to consider the question "Can machines think?"
This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine"
and "think." " (Turing,
1950)
The Turing Test has been the operative definition of Intelligence
that has inspired decades of research in Artificial Intelligence.
In Hindsight, it is not clear if the effect of this bias has been
positive or negative, since it moved much of the emphasis to symbolic,
linguistic, types of intelligence, neglecting other types, for example
the undiscussed intelligence of simple animals, that could have
been a good model for the deisng of early intelligent machines.
However it had the advantage of being 'behaviouristic': intelligent
is what behaves as (appears to be) intelligent. No need to know
what goes on inside a machine or an organism.
Since Turing was imagining a conversation betwen man and computer,
he defined as intelligent a machine that appears to be indistinguishable
from a human in the conversation. One could generalize this
idea removing the linguistic part, that is probably not crucial
... we would remain with a modern version of it: an agent that has
a seemingly intelligent behaviour (eg can make rational decisions,
can learn, can plan ...) should be considered to some extent intelligent.
The test was introduced by Alan M. Turing (1912-1954) as "the imitation
game" in his 1950 article (now available online) Computing Machinery
and Intelligence (Mind, Vol. 59, No. 236, pp. 433-460) ...
 The
new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which
we call the "imitation game." It is played with three people, a
man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either
sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two.
The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which
of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them
by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X
is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed
to put questions to A and B.
Read more about Alan Turing at: turing.org.uk
And about Turing's Test here.
Find Turings 1950 article
here.
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Alan
Turing: The Enigma
by Andrew Hodges,
Douglas Hofstadter(Preface)
Amazon.com
Alan Turing died in 1954, but the themes of his life epitomize
the turn of the millennium. A pure mathematician from a tradition
that prided itself on its impracticality, Turing laid the
foundations for modern computer...
Read more
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