To Alan Turing, he didn’t create the “Turing Test.” He developed a loose, Q&A-style, informal methodological framework for seeing how well machines, robots, AI, or what have you can imitate human-like responses. Hence the name of the test – “The Imitation Game” — in his 1950 paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” And yes, if the test sounds familiar, Benedict Cumberbatch stared as Turing in a 2014 movie of the same name.
If anyone was in a position to conceptualize such a test and be uniquely qualified to judge issues of machine intelligence, it was Turing. Long before movies like “The Terminator,” “Blade Runner,” “The Matrix,” and many more helped popularize issues of machine vs. human intelligence, and decades before personal home computers became possible, Turing was asking questions that we take for granted. As the BBC outlines, Turing and his team worked with the British military during World War II as a cryptographer trying to decode German messages, particularly those messages drafted using the German “Enigma Machine,” which proved difficult to crack.
To those familiar with the logic inherent to complex mathematics and cryptography, Turing’s step from mechanized puzzle boxes to “Can this box ever imitate a person?” will seem natural. As The University of Manchester says, Turing became the university’s Deputy Director of the Computing Laboratory in 1948 after World War II ended. Considered “eccentric” and nicknamed “The Prof,” this is where he devised The Imitation Game, aka the Turing Test.
