BBC Archive | 1992: The TURING TEST and a WHIMSICAL CONVERSATION | Horizon | Science and Nature | BBC Archive @BBCArchive | Uploaded June 2024 | Updated October 2024, 14 hours ago.
The Turing test is a well-known proposal dreamt up by famed mathematician and code-breaker Alan Turing.

He asked if one cannot distinguish a human from a computer in conversation, what grounds do we have for describing the human as sentient, but not the computer? We judge people to be intelligent by how they respond to us – if a computer can give equally suitable responses, can we not say the computer can ‘think?’

In this clip, a 1991 a Turing test organised in Cambridge, Massachusetts yields some interesting results.


Clip taken from Horizon, originally broadcast on BBC Two, Monday 9 March, 1992.





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