In his famous paper 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence' (1950), Alan Turing described something he called the 'Imitation Game'. In this game, a man and a woman are shut up in a room, and an interrogator, communicating with them from outside by means of written messages, attempts, by questioning, to discover which is the man and which the woman - it being the object of the man to pretend to be a woman and of the woman to expose him as a man. Now, argues Turing, imagine the part of the man being taken over by a machine, and, this machine putting up a good performance, would we not be inclined to say that the machine was 'thinking'? Let us observe the logical intricacy, and beauty, of this mind-experiment. The machine is attempting to simulate not simply a man (in the sense of a member of the human species) but a man (in the sense of a member of the male sex) who is simulating a woman. Life compelled the hero of the present book to take part in a game somewhat of this kind, and he made an impressive showing, but every now and then the logic of the thing would be too much for him.

LRB 2 November 1995 | PDF Download