Reverse Turing test to a human) a response along the lines of "is this really a human?". Describing such a situation as a "reverse Turing test" typically occurs retroactively. There are also cases of accidental reverse Turing tests, occurring when a programmer is in a sufficiently non-human mood that his conversation unintentionally resembles that of a computer. In these cases the description is invariably retroactive and humorously intended. The subject may be described as having passed or failed a reverse Turing test or as having failed a Turing test. The latter description is arguably more accurate in these cases; see also the next
Turing test could pass the Turing test simply by manipulating symbols of which they had no understanding. Without understanding, they could not be described as "thinking" in the same sense people do. Therefore, Searle concludes, the Turing test cannot prove that a machine can think. Much like the Turing test itself, Searle's argument has been both widely criticised and highly endorsed. Arguments such as Searle's and others working on the philosophy of mind sparked off a more intense debate about the nature of intelligence, the possibility of intelligent machines and the value of the Turing test that continued through the 1980s and