Turing test

British  

noun

1. a proposed test of a computer's ability to think, requiring that the covert substitution of the computer for one of the participants in a keyboard and screen dialogue should be undetectable by the remaining human participant

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Turing test Cultural  

1. A test proposed by British mathematician Alan Turing, and often taken as a test of whether a computer has humanlike intelligence. If a panel of human beings conversing with an unknown entity (via keyboard, for example) believes that that entity is human, and if the entity is actually a computer, then the computer is said to have passed the Turing test.

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Example Sentences

In the age when the passing of the Turing test was a distant prospect, the question of computing and the mind was one of anthropomorphism—of transmitting human qualities to an object.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 13, 2025

As Spalding University's Lynnell Edwards put it recently: "When did poetry become the new Turing test?"

From Salon • Aug. 29, 2023

Soon after the War, Turing proposed the imitation game - later dubbed the "Turing test" - which seeks to identify whether a machine can behave in a way indistinguishable from a human.

From BBC • Aug. 24, 2023

The Turing test does not consider that we humans are gullible by nature, that words can so easily mislead us into believing something that is not true.

From New York Times • Jan. 20, 2023

Alan Turing predicted that someday machines would be able to pass the Turing test, which he called the imitation game.

From Textbooks • Dec. 14, 2022