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Turing's Question

• Can a Machine Think?
• Both "machine" and "think" are unclear terms.
• Turing suggests we replace the vague question about what thinking is, with a kind of test. He first gives an example of a test to determine, through written questions and answers alone, the sex of someone. He then suggests we generalize, and use such a test to determine whether the thing being tested can think.
• Note, this test, which now is called the Turing Test, is widely celebrated and attempted. Each year, for example, the Loebner Prize Contest occurs to run such tests.
• QUESTION: what features of intelligence (by any of our colloquial undestandings of that word) does this test seem to discover? What features might it overlook?
• As for "machine": Turing famously gave the best definition of this. Today we call his account a "Turing Machine." Turing describes in this article a digital computer -- all computers are Turing machines, so you are already familiar with these.
• It is possible to create a universal Turing machine. This was a big insight in Turing's day, but what it means is simply that in principle computers with the right set of instructions can be then programmed to do anything that any other such computer can do. Again, we are all quite familiar with this. We surf the web both on our PCs, Macs, and Linux boxes.
• Turing next considers some objections
  1. Theological
  2. It would be terrible if machines thought
  3. Computational Limitations
  4. Consciousness
  5. Arbitrary disabilities
  6. Lovelace's Objection
  7. Animal brains are not discrete state machines
  8. Human life is not rule-governed
  9. ESP
• Turing points out that we could perhaps find a way to make machines learn.
• For those interested, Andrew Hodges, a respected Turing biographer, maintains a Turing web site.