In his 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Alan Turing proposed what is now known as the Turing test in artificial intelligence. The idea is that if you are unable to discriminate between a computer and a human who is answering your questions via a keyboard and screen, then the computer is intelligent.
There are many problems with this idea, but despite these problems, it still remains a compelling benchmark, and one that has yet to be reached. But think of the following variation: rather than have your computer and human team answer any old question, the questions have to be similar to what you would expect on the quiz TV show Jeopardy! – clues about trivia in the form of answers to a question that you must come up with. Even this greatly restricted version of the Turing test is very challenging, but I.B.M.’s machine called “Watson” has recently ...
