A London computer on Saturday became the first computer to pass the Turing test, which means it convinced one-third of a panel of judges that it was a human being, a milestone many consider to be a sign of artificial intelligence.
The University of Reading organized the experiment and tested individuals against a chatbot named Eugene Goostman, a press release said.
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The computer program was developed in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and simulates a 13-year-old boy.
The Turing test was developed by Alan Turing in 1950 and was based on the idea that if 30 percent of people chatting with a computer believed it to be human, that would mean it was "thinking."
Although that conclusion is somewhat controversial, it was a milestone that hadn’t been passed until now.
The Turing Test 2014 event, which was held on the 60th anniversary of Turing’s death, involved people talking for five minutes by keyboard with an entity on the other side. Thirty-three percent of the 30 judges were convinced they were talking to a human, the school’s press release said.
"In the field of artificial intelligence, there is no more iconic and controversial milestone than the Turing Test,” said professor Kevin Warwick, a Visiting Professor at the University of Reading and Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research at Coventry University. “A true Turing Test does not set the questions or topics prior to the conversations.”
Warwick said in the release that the test will have societal implications.
“Having a computer that can trick a human into thinking that someone, or even something, is a person we trust is a wake-up call to cybercrime,” he said. “The Turing Test is a vital tool for combatting that threat. It is important to understand more fully how online, real-time communication of this type can influence an individual human in such a way that they are fooled into believing something is true ... when in fact it is not.”
The Eugene Goostman program was developed by Russian Vladimir Veselov and Ukrainian Eugene Demchenko.
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