Computer dupes humans into thinking it's a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy
princetonai.com/bot/bot


Eugene Goostman is a perfectly normal 13-year-old boy in every way, except that he's a computer.
In a milestone for the development of artificial intelligence, the Goostman program became the first to ever pass the Turing Test, which requires that a computer convince at least 30 percent of humans it's one of them and not a soulless bunch of ones and zeroes. Computer whiz Alan Turing devised the test back in the 1950s, and it has remained a symbolic threshold for the AI community ever since.
A Russian team designed Goostman, and the program succeeded on Saturday in duping 33 percent of the judges at a contest in London. Despite the success though, the robocalypse is not yet upon us: Goostman only had to hold court for five minutes about guinea pigs, candy, and his gynecologist father, so we're still a long way from truly terrifying autonomous bots.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Jon Terbush is an associate editor at TheWeek.com covering politics, sports, and other things he finds interesting. He has previously written for Talking Points Memo, Raw Story, and Business Insider.
-
5 inexcusably hilarious cartoons about Ghislaine Maxwell angling for a pardon
Cartoons Artists take on the circle of life, Ghislaine's Island, and more
-
Ozzy Osbourne obituary: heavy metal wildman and lovable reality TV dad
In the Spotlight For Osbourne, metal was 'not the music of hell but rather the music of Earth, not a fantasy but a survival guide'
-
Codeword: August 2, 2025
The Week's daily codeword puzzle
-
Nvidia hits $4 trillion milestone
Speed Read The success of the chipmaker has been buoyed by demand for artificial intelligence
-
X CEO Yaccarino quits after two years
Speed Read Elon Musk hired Linda Yaccarino to run X in 2023
-
Musk chatbot Grok praises Hitler on X
Speed Read Grok made antisemitic comments and referred to itself as 'MechaHitler'
-
Disney, Universal sue AI firm over 'plagiarism'
Speed Read The studios say that Midjourney copied characters from their most famous franchises
-
Amazon launches 1st Kuiper internet satellites
Speed Read The battle of billionaires continues in space
-
Test flight of orbital rocket from Europe explodes
Speed Read Isar Aerospace conducted the first test flight of the Spectrum orbital rocket, which crashed after takeoff
-
Apple pledges $500B in US spending over 4 years
Speed Read This is a win for Trump, who has pushed to move manufacturing back to the US
-
Microsoft unveils quantum computing breakthrough
Speed Read Researchers say this advance could lead to faster and more powerful computers