In a subject so laden with “mysterious” words as that of the philosophy of mind and Artificial Intelligence, there should be no need to stress the importance of dealing with what is actually meant and, perhaps even more vitally, what is not being said. Therefore I shall attempt to demystify some of the most common misconceptions in regards to Turing’s view. First of all the test is not a prerequisite of intelligence. That is to say that if a human being were to fail the test it would not be deemed unintelligent.

Likewise it is quite possible that a machine for some reason other than lack of intelligence could fail the test. All that is being purported is that if a machine happened to pass, we would be quite ill prepared for an explanation as to why it passed, if it were not for the fact that it indeed was intelligent. It could even be argued that maybe an unintelligent machine could pass by the means of extremely cleverly engineered implementations, but that if this were the case, how would we prove its unintelligence?[2]

[1] Turing, Alan M.: “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” from Mind, 59, 1950: P. 433-460

[2] Admittedly the last part is an extrapolation of the gist of Turing’s article, not an actual statement by Turing. Bear in mind that I could be wrong and bear with me in thinking that I am probably right.

What Turing said and did not say[1]