Turing test The question of whether it is possible for machines to think has a long history, which is firmly entrenched in the distinction between dualist and materialist views of the mind. René Descartes prefigures aspects of the Turing test in his 1637 Discourse on the Method when he writes: Here Descartes notes that automata are capable of responding to human interactions but argues that such automata cannot respond appropriately to things said in their presence in the way that any human can. Descartes therefore prefigures the Turing test by defining the insufficiency of appropriate linguistic response as that which separates the
Turing test (now known as "chatterbots") continue to fool people. "CyberLover", a malware program, preys on Internet users by convincing them to "reveal information about their identities or to lead them to visit a web site that will deliver malicious content to their computers". The program has emerged as a "Valentine-risk" flirting with people "seeking relationships online in order to collect their personal data". John Searle's 1980 paper "Minds, Brains, and Programs" proposed the "Chinese room" thought experiment and argued that the Turing test could not be used to determine if a machine can think. Searle noted that software (such as ELIZA)