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In other words, he predicted that by about 2000 a computer would be able to fool approximately
30% of the judges in 5-minute tests. This performance, though, would fall short of what is
needed to pass the test, since he stated (in 1952) that it would be ‘at least 100 years’ before a
computer stood any chance of passing his test with no questions barred.^36
His prediction about when the test would be passed (‘at least 100 years’) was sensibly vague—
and the time-scale makes it clear that Turing appreciated the colossal difficulty of resourcing
a computer to pass the test. Unfortunately, though, there is an urban myth that, according to
Turing, computers would pass his test by the end of the twentieth century—with the result that
he has been unfairly criticized not only for being wrong, but also for being ‘far too optimistic
about the task of programming computers to achieve a command of natural language equiva-
lent to that of every normal person’, as one of his critics, Martin Davis, wrote.^37 Given Turing’s
actual words (‘at least 100 years’) this is misguided criticism.
you can’t believe what you read in the papers
Turing knew his test was ultra-tough—this was the point of it—and he did not expect a com-
puter to pass any time soon. That’s why it came as such a surprise, in June 2014, to read headlines
like the Washington Post’s ‘A bot named “Eugene Goostman” passes the Turing test’.^38 Eugene
Goostman, a chatbot created by programmers Vladimir Veselov and Eugene Demchenko, sim-
ulates a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy’s imperfect English conversation. The BBC’s headline above
an article about Eugene Goostman read ‘Computer AI passes Turing test in “world first” ’.^39 The
article continued:
The 65-year-old Turing Test is successfully passed if a computer is mistaken for a human more
than 30% of the time during a series of five-minute keyboard conversations. On 7 June Eugene
convinced 33% of the judges at the Royal Society in London that it was human.
It was in fact the two researchers responsible for staging the Royal Society Turing test experi-
ment, Huma Shah and Kevin Warwick, who announced to the media that Eugene Goostman
had passed the test. Their press release stated:^40
The 65 year-old iconic Turing Test was passed for the very first time by computer programme
Eugene Goostman during Turing Test 2014 held at the renowned Royal Society in London on
Saturday. ‘Eugene’ simulates a 13 year old boy and was developed in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The press release continued:
If a computer is mistaken for a human more than 30% of the time during a series of five minute
keyboard conversations it passes the test. No computer has ever achieved this, until now. Eugene
managed to convince 33% of the human judges (30 judges took part . . .) that it was human.
Warwick and Shah concluded:
We are therefore proud to declare that Alan Turing’s Test was passed for the first time on
Saturday.
Obviously, though, Turing could not have considered that fooling 30% of the judges during
a series of 5-minute conversations amounted to passing the test, since he predicted that this
30% success rate would be achieved ‘in about fifty years time’, but also said that that it would be