Eugene Goostman

One of the main hurdles machines have to leap before they can successfully enslave humanity is being able to convincingly pretend they are one of us. Most science fiction assumes this will happen long after advanced robot bodies are available. The believability of an advanced humanoid robot that still acts weirdly inhuman is the basis of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career. But what if artificial intelligence became good enough to fool humans much earlier? What about now? That’s what some claim happened Saturday in London, as an AI chat program became the alleged first to pass what is known as the Turing Test. The Turing Test was created by computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950, in an attempt to determine whether machines can exhibit intelligence similar to or indistinguishable from a human. It’s a lot simpler and less dangerous than the Voight–Kampff empathy test from Blade Runner, but the tester has the same goal, separate the men from the machines. As it did in London, the test often takes the form of a competition which pits live people and AIs against judges. For