Can Machines Think?

Abstract

Much has been wri tten about the Tu rin g Test in t he last few years, some of it preposterously off t he mark. People typ ically mis-imagine the test by orders of magnitude. This essay is an antidote, a prosthesis for the imagination, showing how huge t he t ask posed by the Tur ing Test is, and hence how unlikely it is that any com puter will ever pass it . It does not go far enough in the imaginationenhanceme nt dep artmen t , however , and I have updat ed t he essay with a new postscript.