Computers fail the Turing thought test

… Anyone who has ever felt that their computer has a mind of its own will sympathise with the experience of attempting to get some sense out of a piece of software. But what if your laptop really could strike up a conversation unaided? Experts at the University of Reading yesterday claimed to have put that possibility to the test, with a supposedly scientific investigation of whether computers can indeed think for themselves.The Turing test is inspired by the British mathematician Alan Turing, best known for his code-breaking work at Bletchley Park, who wrote in 1950 that “if, during text-based conversation, a machine is indistinguishable from a human, then it could be said to be ‘thinking’, and therefore could be attributed with intelligence”.Kevin Warwick, Reading’s controversial professor of cybernetics, who oversaw yesterday’s experiment, claimed in the mid-1990s that by 2045 computers would have taken over the world and enslaved humanity. The experiment, he hoped, would demonstrate that day was coming.But if computers are indeed to take over the world in a little over three decades, they are unlikely, on yesterday’s evidence at least, to do so by winning people over with their engaging dinner-party chat. A small group of volunteers took turns in five-minute bursts to conduct simultaneous typed conversations with two unseen respondents – one a human sitting in a next-door room, the other a piece of computer software. If 30% of the volunteers could be fooled, by Turing’s own measure the test would be said to have been passed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/oct/13/artificialintelligenceai-computing