Failing the Turing test

The late Alan Turing, a brilliant mathematician who helped crack the Enigma code and who recently received a very belated posthumous pardon for a conviction under an antedeluvian law, once suggested a test for whether a computer or robot was approaching sentience.

He suggested that the machine be put on the other side of a wall, phone line, or similar barrier and conduct a conversation with someone who didn't know whether they were talking to a human or a machine.

If the person on the other end of the conversation could not work out whether they were talking to a machine or a human being, then the machine must be approaching sentience.

On that basis "SmartBot" which had a conversation with John Humphries on the today programme this morning is light years away from sentience. The only one of its' replies that made much sense was something along the lines of "I am a computer" which was at least accurate but certainly would not pass the Turing test!

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