Reverse Turing test if the subject is or is not human. As of 2004, such procedures, called CAPTCHAs, are used in some anti-spam systems to prevent automated bulk use of communications systems. The use of captchas is controversial. Circumvention methods exist that reduce their effectiveness. Also, many implementations of captchas (particularly ones desired to counter circumvention) are inaccessible to humans with disabilities, and/or are difficult for humans to pass. Note that "CAPTCHA" is an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" so that the original designers of the test regard the test as a Turing test to
Alan Turing Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. Despite these accomplishments, he was never fully recognized in his home country during his lifetime due to his homosexuality, which was then a crime in