Concept
Turing test
Overview
The Turing test was designed by Alan Turing to assess a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to that of a human by imitating interactive dialogue. In the modern version, a human evaluator judges a text transcript of a natural-language conversation between a human and a machine. The evaluator tries to identify the machine, and the machine passes if the evaluator cannot reliably tell them apart. The results would not depend on the machine's ability to answer questions correctly, only on how closely its answers resembled those of a human. Since the Turing test is a test of indistinguishability in performance capacity, the original (verbal) version generalizes naturally to all of human performance capacity, including nonverbal (robotic).
The test was introduced as the imitation game by Turing in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" while working at the University of Manchester. It opens with the words: "I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'." Because "thinking" is difficult to define, Turing chooses to "replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words". Turing describes the new form of the problem in terms of a three-person party game called the "imitation game", in which an interrogator asks questions of a man and a woman in another room in order to determine the correct sex of the two players. Turing's new question is: "Are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation game?" This question, Turing believed, was one that could actually be answered. In the remainder of the paper, he argued against the major objections to the proposition that "machines can think".
Since Turing introduced his test, it has been highly influential in the philosophy of artificial intelligence, resulting in substantial discussion and controversy, as well as criticism from philosophers like John Searle, who argue against the test's ability to detect consciousness.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
It is thus manifest that to say we perceive colours in objects is in reality equivalent to saying we perceive something in objects and are yet ignorant of what it is, except as that which determines in us a certain highly vivid and clear sensation, which we call the sensation of colours. There is, however, very great diversity in the manner of judging: for so long as we simply judge that there is an unknown…
René Descartes, Selections from the Principles of Philosophy
States what Turing test is; the author is tied to Turing test in the knowledge graph.
It is hardly necessary to add, that when the inductive inference is of any but the most direct and obvious nature—when it requires several observations or experiments, in varying circumstances, and the comparison of one of these with another—it is impossible to proceed a step, without the artificial memory which words bestow. Without words, we should, if we had often seen A and B in immediate and obvious…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Turing test is.
Again, by means of these two tests we may likewise know the difference between men and brutes. For it is highly deserving of remark, that there are no men so dull and stupid, not even idiots, as to be incapable of joining together different words, and thereby constructing a declaration by which to make their thoughts understood; and that on the other hand, there is no other animal, however perfect or happily…
René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences
The author is tied to Turing test in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Turing test
Related ideas
- Artificial intelligence
- Aphrodite
- Alan Turing
- John Searle
- Ancient Greek
- Jonathan Swift
- Massachusetts
- Knowledge representation and reasoning
- Dialogue
- Mind–body dualism
- Discourse on the Method
- Intentionality
- Functionalism (philosophy of mind)
- BBC
- Mental disorder
- Materialism
- Mind
- A. J. Ayer
- Cybernetics
- Natural language
- Neuroscience
- Qualia
- Property dualism
- Psychology
Place in the tradition
Part of Consciousness.