Turing test

Updated: 03/10/2024 by Computer Hope
Alan Turing

Sometimes abbreviated as TT, the Turing test was developed by Alan Turing and published in the October 1950 paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence. The test proposed that if a computer's output responses were indistinguishable from those of a human, it could be said to "think."

Turing's test involved putting a human interrogator in a room with two terminals, one connected to a human and the other to a computer. If the interrogator couldn't tell the difference between the two during their communication, the computer passed and demonstrated human intelligence.

Has the Turing test been passed?

As of 2024, whether any bot has passed the Turing test is still debated. Many argue that while we're a lot closer than we've ever been before, no bot can fool all judges in a Turing test. However, bots like "Eugene Goostman," Google's LaMDA, and ChatGPT have claimed to have successfully passed the Turing test.

What is a reverse Turing test?

With smarter systems like ChatGPT being available, we now need a way to detect if someone is human. A reverse Turing test is any test that tries to determine if someone is human or something created was done by a human. A good example of a reverse Turing test is the CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), which tests website visitors to see if they're human or a bot.

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