Computing Machinery and Intelligence

Introduction

Turing published the paper in the philosophy journal Mind in October 1950, while working on the Manchester computer. Since “thinking” is too vague to define, he replaces the question with a game: an interrogator communicates in writing with a human and a machine and must tell which is which. He predicts that in about fifty years machines would play so well that an average interrogator would have no more than a 70 per cent chance of identifying them after five minutes of questioning. Most of the paper answers nine objections, among them the theological one, Gödel’s theorem, consciousness and Lady Lovelace’s claim that machines can only do what they are told. It closes by proposing machines that learn like children.

Connections

Builds on

• On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem1936 · Alan Turing

Criticized in

• Minds, Brains, and Programs (The Chinese Room)1980 · John Searle

More works by Alan Turing

• 1936On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem

Appears in

• Journey ‘The Riddle of Consciousness’ · Stop 5 of 10