What if you’re a machine? How would you know? Let’s start by taking a look at the Turing Test.

Turing’s 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence begins with the question as to whether machines can think. What can machines do? We have seen leaps and bounds in terms of technological advancement, not just security and surveillance, but games, knowledge bases and information. In fact, the idea of computers developing self-awareness and independent thought has been the plot of a great many fictional stories, horror and otherwise.

He proposed a test, where a judge has to decide which of two players — A or B — is a computer and which is a human. The judge is limited to using responses to written questions. In fact, you can even play it online.

While there’s a number of objections as to whether technology would ever be good enough to have independent intelligence, there’s still a hypothetical potential for artificial intelligence. And of course, what that might mean for our definition of consciousness, if a machine could be made concious. There’s a number of challenges to the Turing Test , including the ‘Chinese Room’ story of John Searle, which you can see in the links below.

Turing Test Resources — Ayse Pinar Saygin

The Chinese Room Argument