The Turing Test

The Turing test was invented by Alan Turing in 1950. This test is supposed to determine the intelligence of a machine in comparison to a human to see if their intelligence is distinguishable or not and if these artificially intelligent machines are actually “intelligent”. In this test, there would be a human evaluator who would be evaluating the answers that the participants give and they, in turn, would have to determine who in which is the machine and who's the human. The participants one being a machine and one a human separated from each other would be asked questions by the evaluator via a text to chat system on like a laptop or something of that sort and the evaluator would judge who they think the human is and who the machine is and if the evaluator cannot tell reliably which one the machine is then the machine passes the test.

This test was put forward to see if machines can be “intelligent”, to see if consciousness is at the root of intelligence, and what makes a being intelligent. These questions put forward by the Turing test leads to even more questions like if a machine passes the test is it intelligent then? Can a machine think? All these questions and more are attempted to be answered by this test when it's taken seriously. However, many cognitive scientists and philosophers argue over the legitimacy of this test and if the test can actually get us to these answers.

There are a few different objections to this test but ill focus on the Theological objection that is brought into light if you're a substance dualist. A quick synopsis of substance dualism is that there are two features that make up our ontology minds and bodies. The substance dualist believes that thinking is a function of a non-material substance that somehow combines with the body to make up a person. The objection now is where the theology comes in because to animate a body with a mind there must be something which in turn comes in the soul aspect. Since the soul then is what animates and is created by a god then it would be the question of why wouldn’t God give a soul to some sort of digital computer or AI? With this specific objection, there are many technicalities that first must be considered to be true but the main problem with this objection would be who and what sort of things get souls from this God? Most people, however, think that God only gave humans souls or only biological life so these machines wouldn’t have a soul and in turn, couldn’t be a thinking thing.

But besides the objections there also is some continued work even to this day with the Turing test. I will leave it to the readers to decide whether this test is applicable with attempting to answers the questions it seeks out. With AI becoming extremely more relevant every day now it's important to bear the consequences and seek out questions involving it before we dive too deep into the world of artificial life and can't come back. More work being done in AI every day has to happen if we are to be prepared if we want a safe and reliable future.