Summary
Much has been written about the Turing Test in the last few years, some of it preposterously off the mark. People typically mis-imagine the test by orders of magnitude. This essay is an antidote, a prosthesis for the imagination, showing how huge the task posed by the Turing Test is, and hence how unlikely it is that any computer will ever pass it. It does not go far enough in the imagination-enhancement department, however, and I have updated the essay with a new postscript.
Originally appeared in Michael G. Shafto, editor, How We Know: Nobel Conference XX, Harper & Row, San Francisco, CA, 1985. Reprinted with permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc., New York.
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© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Dennett, D.C. (2004). Can Machines Think?. In: Teuscher, C. (eds) Alan Turing: Life and Legacy of a Great Thinker. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-05642-4_12
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