Computer dupes humans into thinking it's a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy

princetonai.com/bot/bot

Computer dupes humans into thinking it's a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy
(Image credit: 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.

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Jon Terbush

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.