The AI of the Beholder

(with Richard H.R. Harper)

Forget the Turing test. Alan said it best in a neglected paragraph of the original paper in which he first proposed his test:

The original question, “Can machines think?” I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion. Nevertheless I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted (442).