The Turing Test

The Turing Test is a method of inquiry in artificial intelligence (A.I) for determining whether or not a computer is capable of thinking like a human being. The test is named after Alan Turing, the founder of the Turing Test and an English computer scientist.

What is the human mind? Does it just consist of neurons that are constantly firing? Or is it something more than that, something uniquely human?

Alan Turing was an English computer scientist, mathematician, cryptanalyst, logician, and theoretical biologist. He was a pioneer of theoretical computer science and is considered the father of artificial intelligence. He devised a test to distinguish between humans and A.I, which was based on one principle- can machines talk like humans?

Humans have a unique ability to create, understand, and manipulate language. Various organisms in the animal kingdom use some form of communication, but none are as complicated and organised as human language. This ability seems to be unique to humans, and Turing considered whether this was something that could be recreated with artificial intelligence, or if it would be something that they could never truly master.

According to the Turing test, a human judge must have a text conversation with a few unseen human participants. At one point in the conversation, a human must be replaced by a robot. If the judge can go on with the conversation without realising the swap, the artificial intelligence passes the test and is considered as "intelligent".

The first robot to pass this test was called "ELIZA". She cleverly managed to mislead judges by mimicking a psychologist, by encouraging participants to talk more and asking questions more than answering them.

Robots can what was unimaginable earlier. They can perform surgery, go to space, clean our homes and so much more. But they cannot do the most basic of human things- have a natural, free-flowing conversation. Although voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant can indeed be spoken to, it still doesn't feel perfectly organic. It's just not the same. But developments in artificial intelligence has improved conversational levels by drastic levels. The fact that robots can pass CAPTCHA tests also prove that understanding of language is gradually improving.

The biggest takeaway from this discussion is that even though robots are getting closer to figuring out human language, there still seems to be an insurmountable gap. Will they one day be able to master language and communication? Or is this a human secret that will forever remain that way? Only time will tell.

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