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
Turing test Turing test, where a machine's response cannot be distinguished from an expert in a given field. This is also known as a "Feigenbaum test" and was proposed by Edward Feigenbaum in a 2003 paper. The "Total Turing test" variation of the Turing test, proposed by cognitive scientist Stevan Harnad, adds two further requirements to the traditional Turing test. The interrogator can also test the perceptual abilities of the subject (requiring computer vision) and the subject's ability to manipulate objects (requiring robotics). A letter published in "Communications of the ACM" describes the concept of generating a synthetic patient population and proposes