Saw a great movie a couple of weeks ago called ExMachina.  It was an exploration of the concept of artificial intelligence.  That is intelligence made or produced by human beings rather that produced naturally.

Allan Turing was a British scientist considered by many to be one of father’s of computer Science.  Among a number of significant achievements before committing suicide Turing  introduced what is now known as the Turing Test in a paper he wrote that was published in 1950.

In essence he proposed that if a human examiner was set up to converse with other humans and machines (through the same interface) when the conversation with the machine could not be identified as such, the machine could be deemed intelligent.

In ExMachina the story was a variation on the Turing Test.  The tester had only one subject to examine, an android.  In a twist the builder of the android designed the test to see if the machine could manipulate the tester.

In 2014 PrincetonAI’s submission to the annual Turing Test (a machine called Eugene Goostman) fooled 33% of the judges.  There is of course controversy associated with this result – did the developers games the system?, Was the test too easy?

Regardless of the questions, Artificial Intelligence is clearly on it’s way.