Science & Technology

The Turing test has been passed for the first time, scientists claim

By T.K. Randall
June 14, 2024

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) Back in 1950, Turing - the famed mathematician, computer scientist and logician who is widely regarded to be the father of theoretical computer science - devised a test to answer the question of whether or not computers are capable of exhibiting genuine intelligence.

The test itself was very simple - requiring a participant to communicate via textual messages with both a human and a machine, without being told which of them is which.

In order for the machine to pass the test, the participant would need to be unable to distinguish - after conversing with both of them - which of them was the human and which was the machine.

Even though computers became increasingly sophisticated over the course of the 20th Century, none of them were able to come close to convincing someone that they are in fact a real person.

With the advent of modern artificial intelligence systems, however, it looks as the Turing test has finally found a winner - that is, at least, according to a recent study.

For the research, scientists asked 500 people to speak to four respondents - a human, an old 1960s-era AI program called ELIZA and two versions of OpenAI's modern ChatGPT.Each conversation lasted 5 minutes and the participants had to work out which respondent was human and which was an AI.

Incredibly, 54% of participants believed that the latest iteration of ChatGPT was in fact human.

"ELIZA was limited to canned responses, which greatly limited its capabilities," AI researcher Nell Watson told Live Science.

"It might fool someone for five minutes, but soon the limitations would become clear."

"Language models are endlessly flexible, able to synthesize responses to a broad range of topics, speak in particular languages or sociolects and portray themselves with character-driven personality and values."

"It's an enormous step forward from something hand-programmed by a human being, no matter how cleverly and carefully."

Source: Live Science

Tags: Turing, Artificial Intelligence