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 is not really a conscious being, but only a dummy or a machine, is that it fails to satisfy one of the empirical tests by which the presence or absence of consciousness is determined." (This suggestion is very similar to the Turing test, but is concerned with consciousness rather than intelligence. Moreover, it is not certain that Ayer's popular philosophical classic was familiar to Turing.) In other words, a thing is not conscious if it fails the consciousness test. Researchers in the United Kingdom had been exploring "machine intelligence" for up to ten years prior to the founding of the