Some info on Turing and The Turing Test:

Some biographical highlights:

Alan Mathison Turing (1912-1954) is often cited as the father of computer science, artificial intelligence, and modern probability theory.

In 1936, he describes and shows that a “universal computer” (a Turing Machine) can exist – prior to the existence of the technology necessary for a modern computer.

In 1940, he is credited with saving more Allied lives than any single person in WWII due to his work with other mathematicians to decipher “The Enigma Machine” – the communications encoder used by the German Navy.

Later 1940s, he publishes theoretical work on the nature of computers and code while attempted to construct an “Automatic Computing Engine” at the National Physical Laboratory in London (he doesn’t).

Early 1950s, he turns his mathematical agility to other fields, particularly biology, publishing work on among other things morphogenesis, the development of pattern and form in living organisms.

In 1952, Turing is arrested and tried as a homosexual. He offers no defense other than that he saw nothing wrong with his actions. He is found guilty, loses security clearance & so access to much of his own work and is given the alternatives of prison or one year of estrogen injections.

In 1954, Turing commits suicide by eating an apple poisoned with potassium cyanide.

Nice biographical page: http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Turing.html

A quick summation of the Turing Test from the Cognitive Science Department at UC: San Diego: http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~asaygin/tt/ttest.html#new

THE TURING TEST

The Turing Test was introduced by Turing as "the imitation game" in his 1950 article (now available online) Computing Machinery and Intelligence (Mind, Vol. 59, No. 236, pp. 433-460) which he so boldly began by the following sentence:

I propose to consider the question "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think."

Turing Test is meant to determine if a computer program has intelligence. Quoting Turing, the original imitation game can be described as follows:

The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the "imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B.

When talking about the Turing Test today what is generally understood is the following: The interrogator is connected to one person and one machine via a terminal, therefore can't see her counterparts. Her task is to find out which of the two candidates is the machine, and which is the human only by asking them questions. If the machine can "fool" the interrogator, it is intelligent.

This test has been subject to different kinds of criticism and has been at the heart of many discussions in AI, philosophy and cognitive science for the past 50 years.

Turing’s article which started this all: “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”. Mind 49: 433-460 (1950). http://cogprints.org/499/00/turing.html

“The Turing Test: 50 Years Later” Saygin, A.P., Cicekli, I. and Akman, V. (2000), 'Turing Test: 50 Years Later', Minds and Machines 10(4): 463-518. PDF of Article: http://crl.ucsd.edu/~saygin/papers/MMTT.pdf

In one of the last letters before his suicide by poisoned apple (1954), Turing wrote in a letter to his friend Norman Routledge:

Turing believes machines think
Turing lies with men
Therefore machines do not think

Some links on Turing:

David Chalmers’ bibliography of Turing Test academic papers:

http://consc.net/biblio/4.html

The Alan Turning Homepage: http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/

Sanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries:

Turing Alan: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-machine/

Turing Machines: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-machine/

Turing Test: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/

Some on-line Turing & Turing-esque Tests:

Probably the place to start: a big collection of “chatbots:” http://simonlaven.com/

Convince this one you’re not a robot: http://www.mrmind.com/mrmind3

ALICE Artificial Intelligence Foundation: http://alicebot.org/

A learning Chatbot: http://www.jabberwacky.com/

Turing Hub: http://www.turinghub.com/turinghub.html