In the 67 years since Alan Turing proposed his Imitation Game – the infamous ‘Turing test’ for artificial intelligence (AI) – people have been confused over the very purpose of AI itself.
At issue: whether the point of AI is to simulate human behavior so seamlessly that it can fool people into thinking they are actually interacting with a human being, rather than a piece of software.
Such deception was never the point of Turing’s exercise, however. Rather, he realized that there was no way to define true intelligence, and thus no way to test for it. So he came up with the game as a substitute – something people could theoretically test for.
Regardless of Turing’s intentions, setting the bar for AI based on its ability to snooker an audience has become fully ingrained in our culture, thanks in large part to Hollywood.