Why the Turing Test Became Obsolete | by Rafe Brena, Ph.D. | Feb, 2024

And what to use instead

What’s generally called “The Turing Test” is intended to tell humans from machines pretending to be humans. That distinction between “human-made” and “machine-made” looks more relevant each day, isn’t it?

In this post, I’ll explain briefly how the Turing Test got the status of the ultimate proof of human-level intelligence and then how this status was lost. Then, I mention some good alternatives to use instead for testing human –and even super-human– level cognition.

A sound measurement of the cognitive abilities of machines is a must for data professionals as we are flooded by “intelligence” or even “consciousness” claims that are mostly noise and hype.

Turing himself called his test “the imitation game,” but then things become murky because that’s the name of a movie about Turing’s personal life and struggles — which were big.

While I liked the movie, as well as how Benedict Cumberbatch delivered the lead role, the “imitation game” is not the same as the “Turing machine,” which is not the same as the “Enigma machine.” The film confused them all.

Look, I taught a course on Automata Theory for more than ten years at my university, and the final topic was the Turing Machine. This one is just one of several types of automata, such as Finite State automaton, Stack automaton, and so on.

I can tell you that the Turing Machine has nothing to do with the Enigma machine, which was an encoder used for the German cyphered messages sent during the war. Turing worked for British intelligence in order to decipher those messages so they could see what the Germans were up to.

What is unfortunate is that despite Turing’s good work, that wasn’t enough to spare him from a trial over his homosexuality. If you saw the movie, you know Turing was forced to endure chemical castration, which left emotional scars so deep that later on, he committed suicide.

I hope this is enough to clarify that the Turing machine and the Enigma machine were all related to Turing but had nothing to do with the Turing test.