And what to make use of as an alternative

What’s generally called “The Turing Test” is meant to inform humans from machines pretending to be humans. That distinction between “human-made” and “machine-made” looks more relevant every day, isn’t it?

On this post, I’ll explain briefly how the Turing Test got the status of the final word proof of human-level intelligence after which how this status was lost. Then, I mention some good alternatives to make use of as an alternative for testing human –and even super-human– level cognition.

A sound measurement of the cognitive abilities of machines is a must for data professionals as we’re flooded by “intelligence” and even “consciousness” claims which are mostly noise and hype.

Turing himself called his test “the imitation game,” but then things turn out to be murky because that’s the name of a movie about Turing’s personal life and struggles — which were big.

While I liked the movie, in addition to how Benedict Cumberbatch delivered the lead role, the “imitation game” isn’t the identical because the “Turing machine,” which isn’t the identical because the “Enigma machine.” The film confused all of them.

Look, I taught a course on Automata Theory for greater than ten years at my university, and the ultimate topic was the Turing Machine. This one is just one in all several forms of automata, comparable to Finite State automaton, Stack automaton, and so forth.

I can inform you that the Turing Machine has nothing to do with the Enigma machine, which was an encoder used for the German cyphered messages sent in the course of the war. Turing worked for British intelligence as a way to decipher those messages in order that they could see what the Germans were as much as.

What’s unlucky is that despite Turing’s good work, that wasn’t enough to spare him from a trial over his homosexuality. When you saw the movie, Turing was forced to endure chemical castration, which left emotional scars so deep that afterward, he committed suicide.

I hope this is sufficient to make clear that the Turing machine and the Enigma machine were all related to Turing but had nothing to do with the Turing test.