Turing tests are procedures to test the functional equivalence of people and computers. They generalize the thought experiment proposed by the British mathematician Alan M. Turing (1912–1954) in his pioneering 1950 paper, "Computer Machines and Intelligence," to answer the question, Can machines think?:

[T]he "imitation game" ... is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman.

In order that tones of voice may not help the interrogator the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten. The ideal arrangement is to have a teleprinter communicating between the two rooms.

We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes...