Alan Turing — "A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human in…"
A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Alan Turing
"The only way to do great work is to love what you do."
"The future of humanity depends on the development of artificial intelligence."
"One day ladies will take their computers for walks in the park and tell each other, 'My little computer said such a funny thing this morning'."
"It is not possible to produce a set of rules purporting to describe what a man should do in every conceivable set of circumstances."
"I believe that in about fifty years' time it will be possible to programme computers, with a storage capacity of about 10^9, to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator w…"
Verification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: grok
1 source checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
True machine intelligence isn't measured by speed, memory, or processing power — it's measured by behavior. If a machine can hold a conversation so naturally that a real person cannot tell they're talking to software, it has crossed the threshold into genuine intelligence. This shifts the question away from 'how does it work inside' toward 'what can it do' — a practical, human-centered test for a concept that resists easy definition.
Relevance to Alan Turing
Turing proposed this idea in his landmark 1950 paper 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence,' introducing what became the Turing Test. His wartime codebreaking at Bletchley Park also centered on deception — cracking Nazi Enigma communications by simulating enemy logic. Personally, Turing lived as a gay man in an era requiring concealment. He understood intimately the gap between what one truly is and what one must appear to be.
The era
In 1950, computers filled entire rooms and performed basic arithmetic. The concept of a thinking machine was science fiction to most. Post-WWII Britain was rebuilding, and tools that helped crack Enigma raised urgent questions about whether machines could reason. Philosophers debated consciousness; scientists debated mechanism. Turing's behavioral framing cut through speculation with an empirical challenge that still defines artificial intelligence discourse seventy-five years later.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].