The Turing Test


(Source: xkcd)

It's hard to write about virtual humans without talking about the Turing Test, as we do in Chapter 2. Whilst it is no longer seen as a valid test of "intelligence" it is still a reasonable test of the natural language and conversational ability of chatbot programmes.

Here are a few relevant links which we'll keep adding to:



It should also be noted that the term "Turing-capable" implies a system which could pass the Turing Test (i.e. fool a human), and that the term can be applied to other aspects of a virtual human (e.g. looks, emotional response, movement) quite apart from the natural language. In fact the "Gold" version of the Loebner prize looks at a Skype call type situation rather than a text-chat one.