The history of AI is often told as the story of machines getting smarter over time. What’s lost is the human element in the narrative, how intelligent machines are designed, trained, and powered by human minds and bodies.
In this six-part series, we explore that human history of AI—how innovators, thinkers, workers, and sometimes hucksters have created algorithms that can replicate human thought and behavior (or at least appear to). While it can be exciting to be swept up by the idea of super-intelligent computers that have no need for human input, the true history of smart machines shows that our AI is only as good as we are.
In 1950, at the dawn of the digital age, Alan Turing published what was to be become his most well-known article, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” in which he poses the question, “Can machines think?”
Instead of trying to define the terms “machine” and “think,” Turing outlines a different method for answering this question derived from a Victorian parlor amusement called the imitation game. The rules of the game stipulated that a man and a woman, in different rooms, would communicate with a judge via handwritten notes. The judge had to guess who was who, but their task was complicated by the fact that the man was trying to imitate a woman.
Inspired by this game, Turing devised a thought experiment in which one contestant was replaced by a computer. If this computer could be programmed to play the imitation game so well that the judge couldn’t tell if he was talking to a machine or a human, then it would be reasonable to conclude, Turing argued, that the machine was intelligent.
This thought experiment became known as the Turing test, and to this day, remains one of the best known and most contentious ideas in AI. The enduring appeal of the test is that it promises a non-ambiguous answer to the philosophically fraught question: “Can machines think?” If the computer passes Turing’s test, then the answer is yes. As philosopher Daniel Dennett has written, Turing’s test was supposed to be a philosophical conversation stopper. “Instead of arguing interminably about the ultimate nature and essence of thinking,” Dennett writes, “why don’t we all agree that whatever that nature is, anything that could pass this test would surely have it."
But a closer reading of Turing’s paper reveals a small detail that introduces ambiguity into the test, suggesting that perhaps Turing meant it more as a philosophical provocation about machine Intelligence than as a practical test.
In one section of “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Turing simulated what the test might look like with an imagined intelligent computer of the future. (The human is asking questions, the computer responding.)
Q: Please write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge.
A: Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry.
A: (Pause about 30 seconds and then give as answer) 105621.
Q: I have K at my K1, and no other pieces.
