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Alan Turing opened modern AI with a single question and a clever game to answer it.
In 1950, Alan Turing published Computing Machinery and Intelligence in the philosophy journal Mind. He opened with the question, can machines think? Then he argued the question was too slippery to answer directly.
Instead, Turing proposed replacing it with a practical test: the imitation game. If a human judge, chatting by text with a hidden machine and a hidden human, cannot reliably tell them apart, we might as well call the machine intelligent.
Turing answered each one, often with wit. He predicted that by the year 2000, machines would have enough memory to play the imitation game well enough to fool an average interrogator for five minutes.
We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.
— Alan Turing, 1950
The big idea: Turing gave the field a workable starting point by trading the hard question for a testable one. That trade still shapes how we evaluate models today.
15 questions · take it digitally for instant feedback at tendril.neural-forge.io/learn/quiz/end-history-turing-1950-builders
What question did Alan Turing ask in his landmark 1950 paper?
Why did Turing say the question 'can machines think?' was too slippery to answer directly?
In Turing's imitation game, what does the judge do?
What would a machine need to do to 'pass' the imitation game?
What did Lady Lovelace's objection claim about machines?
Which objection did Turing describe as 'heads-in-the-sand'?
What was Turing's response to the argument that machines cannot feel or have feelings?
What year did Turing predict machines would fool an average interrogator for five minutes in the imitation game?
Why did Turing avoid the question of whether a machine could be 'truly' conscious?
In what journal did Turing publish 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence'?
What does 'behaviorism' mean in the context of Turing's test?
What did the theological objection claim about machines?
What was the 'big idea' that Turing gave to the field of AI?
How does the imitation game still influence AI today?
What did Turing mean when he said, 'We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty that needs to be done'?