Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Alan Turing. 1950. (View Paper → )
The new problem has the advantage of drawing a fairly sharp line between the physical and the intellectual capacities of a man. No engineer or chemist claims to be able to produce a material which is indistinguishable from the human skin. It is possible that at some time this might be done, but even supposing this invention available we should feel there was little point in trying to make a "thinking machine" more human by dressing it up in such artificial flesh. The form in which we have set the problem reflects this fact in the condition which prevents the interrogator from seeing or touching the other competitors, or hearing their voices.
This paper is one of the most significant and influential works in the history of technology and computer science.
It introduces the "Imitation Game" now known as the Turing Test, which proposes that a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human would mean it is effectively "thinking."
The paper sparked extensive discussions and research into whether machines can think, learn, and simulate human reasoning, setting the stage for modern AI.
Turing shifted the debate from a philosophical question ("Can machines think?") to a pragmatic one ("Can machines behave indistinguishably from humans?"). This reframing had profound implications for philosophy, cognitive science, and computer science.
Turing also clarified the concept of digital computers, their universality (the idea that one machine could simulate the operation of any other), and their potential capabilities, influencing the trajectory of computing hardware and software development.
In the latter part of the paper, Turing discusses "learning machines," anticipating the future field of machine learning. He described how computers might be programmed to improve their performance and "learn" from experience, which presaged concepts central to contemporary machine learning and neural networks.