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
Church–Turing thesis three formally-defined classes of computable functions coincide with the "informal" notion of an effectively calculable function. Since, as an informal notion, the concept of effective calculability does not have a formal definition, the thesis, although it has near-universal acceptance, cannot be formally proven. Since its inception, variations on the original thesis have arisen, including statements about what can physically be realized by a computer in our universe (physical Church-Turing thesis) and what can be efficiently computed (Church–Turing thesis (complexity theory)). These variations are not due to Church or Turing, but arise from later work in complexity theory and digital physics.