The Turing Test (proposed by mathmatitian Turing,1950, years before the
ability to simulate human behaviour was available) was suggested as a
method to tell whether a computer is thinking. It is useful in the
feild of artificial inteligence (the feild in which computer programs
are devised to display intelegence in solving problems/producing
conversation). A subfeild of this is computer simulation, where the
programs try to simulate human behavior. Computer simulation may not be
the best way of running a program, but it is supossed to simulate human
thought processes.
The Turing Test suggests that if you put two teletypes into a room,
with a person to act as judge, who may ask any questions they like by
typing. One teletype is connected to a person in another room, and the
other is connected to a computer. If the judge cannot tell which is the
'human teletype' and which is the 'computer teletype' then the computer
must be thinking. This idea produces in interesting logic flaw when
considering COMPUTER SIMULATION, because just having the same
behavioral output as a human does not mean that the computer uses the
same cognitive processes
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Feb 13 2001 - 16:23:43 GMT