For the first time a computer has passed the famous Turing Test, and fooled judges in to thinking that it was human. 

Alan Turing was one of the greatest minds of his generation, and perhaps the father of artificial intelligence. During World War II, his contribution to breaking the code used by the Nazis was one of the most significant developments that helped bring the conflict to an end, and he envisioned a time when a "universal machine" would be able to talk to us, interact with us and even chat to us, without us being able to tell it apart from a real human. Hint, you're looking at the "universal machine" he imagined right now, which you might know as a computer.

Turing was the first to propose that a computer could solve any mathematical problem so long as it was expressed as an algorithm, and from there modern computing was born. He was even prescient enough to come up with a test that would be able to tell the difference between human intelligence and artificial intelligence, and if this test were ever to be passed, then the computer or the program could be designated as "thinking", in the same way that we do.

Yesterday, a program called "Eugene Goostman", designed to make users think it was a 13-year-old boy, passed that test, the first time a computer has ever done so. The requirement for the program to pass is that it must make 30% of the judges believe, in a five-minute text-based conversation, that it is human. Vladimir Veselov, who lives in the United States, and Ukrainian Eugene Demchenko  who is based in Russia, made the program, and their work passed the test on the 60th anniversary of Dr. Turing's death. 

Turing may have been a hero, but he remained relatively unknown as his efforts involved in cracking the Enigma codes were top secret, and after the war he was convicted of performing "acts of gross indecency between men" at a time when homosexuality was illegal in England. He was chemically castrated as a result, and it is believed that his death from cyanide poisoning was a suicide, but there has recently been some evidence to the contrary. For more on this fascinating figure and his story, check out the Radiolab podcast on talking to machines. You should be listening to Radiolab anyway, because it's pretty excellent, but this is a huge development in the field of artificial intelligence which will surely have huge implications in the future. We are, of course, talking about Skynet from the Terminator movies.

Via The Telegraph. Main pic via Ars Technica.