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 completeness it is impossible to determine whether this characteristic will hold. This impossibility poses problems when analyzing real-world computer programs. For example, one cannot write a tool that entirely protects programmers from writing infinite loops, or protects users from supplying input that would cause infinite loops. One can instead limit a program to executing only for a fixed period of time (timeout), or limit the power of flow control instructions (for example, providing only loops that iterate over the items of an existing array). However, another theorem shows that there are problems solvable by Turing-complete languages that cannot be solved by