The Turing Test Experience
Can you tell whether you are talking to a human or an artificial intelligence?
And perhaps the more difficult question: can you convince someone else that you are human? Explore intelligence, identity, communication and trust through a live conversational experiment.
Discover the ExperienceWhat would you say—or do—to prove that there is a human being on your side of the screen?
Can machines think?
In 1950, mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing proposed a different way of approaching one of the most difficult questions about artificial intelligence.
Rather than attempting to define exactly what it means for a machine to “think,” Turing described an imitation game in which a person would communicate through text and try to determine whether the unseen participant was a human or a machine.
The idea became what we now commonly call the Turing Test.
Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Turing’s landmark paper shifted the discussion from what intelligence is to what intelligent behavior might look like in an interaction.
The Loebner Prize
Decades later, the idea became a real-world competition. Beginning in 1991, the Loebner Prize brought together human judges, human participants and conversational computer programs in experiments inspired by Turing’s proposal.
Humans meet machines
Judges held text conversations and attempted to determine which participants were human and which were computer programs. The programs competed to produce the most convincing human-like conversation.
But something unexpected happens.
The machines are not the only ones being judged.
The humans also have to demonstrate their humanity. A person who communicates too predictably, too formally—or simply in a way that another person associates with a machine—may be mistaken for AI.
This turns the experiment into a much more interesting question: What signals do we actually use to recognize another human being?
The Most Human Human
“It is not only about whether machines can appear human. Humans must also show what makes them human.”
Inspired by the idea of the Most Human Human, our experience also looks at how successfully participants are recognized as human when they are actually speaking with another person.
What gives us away? Humor? Hesitation? Curiosity? Emotion? Imperfection? Surprise? Shared experience? Or have today’s AI systems become capable of reproducing many of the signals we once considered uniquely human?
How the experience works
Participants enter an anonymous conversation without knowing who—or what—is waiting on the other side.
Enter
Participants join the experience anonymously.
Connect
The system may connect them with another human participant or with an AI.
Converse
Participants explore ideas through conversation without revealing personal identifying information.
Decide
At the end, participants decide whether their partner was human or AI—and explain the evidence behind their judgment.
More than a game
The objective is not simply to “beat the AI.” The real learning begins when participants examine how they made their judgments—and what those judgments reveal about humans, machines and themselves.
Human Communication
What makes a conversation feel authentic, spontaneous or genuinely human?
Intelligence
Does sounding intelligent demonstrate understanding—or simply convincing language?
Identity
How much can we really infer about an unseen conversational partner from language alone?
AI Ethics
When should an artificial intelligence be required to disclose that it is not human?
Bias
What assumptions and stereotypes influence our ideas about how humans and machines communicate?
Trust
What happens to online trust when identifying whether we are interacting with a person becomes increasingly difficult?
Questions worth exploring
One experiment. Many possibilities.
The Turing Test Experience can become the starting point for conversations about AI, ethics, communication and human identity across different learning environments.
The experience is a prompt for observation and reflection. A participant’s success or failure in identifying AI in a single conversation should not be interpreted as a definitive measure of machine intelligence.
Bring the Turing Test Experience to your school
The Turing Test Experience is available exclusively to Center for AI in Education School Members.
School Members receive access to the protected activity page, the credentials required to enter the experiment, and resources to help facilitate the experience with their learning community.
Please note: access to this activity is not included with Individual Memberships.
School Members: Access the Experience Learn About School Membership