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Alan Turing, British code-breaker during WWII, imminent computer scientist, and much else has been denied a posthumous pardon from the British government for his 1952 conviction on charges of "Gross Indecency" because of his homosexuality. [more inside]
posted by clavier on Feb 8, 2012 - 89 comments

"During the competition, each of four judges will type a conversation with one of us for five minutes, then the other, and then will have 10 minutes to reflect and decide which one is the human. Judges will also rank all the contestants—this is used in part as a tiebreaking measure. The computer program receiving the most votes and highest ranking from the judges (regardless of whether it passes the Turing Test by fooling 30 percent of them) is awarded the title of the Most Human Computer. It is this title that the research teams are all gunning for, the one with the cash prize (usually $3,000), the one with which most everyone involved in the contest is principally concerned. But there is also, intriguingly, another title, one given to the confederate who is most convincing: the Most Human Human award." [more inside]
posted by jng on Feb 15, 2011 - 36 comments

Forever Alone? No one to talk to? Not anymore! Cleverbot is chatbot AI that learns from people and provides a surprisingly realistic simulation of inane chatter. It's also a Beatles fan. [more inside]
posted by The Whelk on Feb 12, 2011 - 124 comments

Manufactoria is one of the best games I have played in a while. [more inside]
posted by motty on May 21, 2010 - 42 comments

A Turing Machine [SLYT]. [more inside]
posted by daniel_charms on Apr 24, 2010 - 41 comments

Are we still relevant if we can no longer reliably grade the Turing Test? [more inside]
posted by minimii on Jan 7, 2010 - 106 comments

UK government apologizes to Alan Turing. It might be a long time overdue, but it's a really nice apology. [previously]
posted by lupus_yonderboy on Sep 10, 2009 - 128 comments

Alan Turing , one of the men responsible for computers as we know them today, was persecuted by the British government for being a homosexual. [more inside]
posted by idiopath on Aug 19, 2009 - 209 comments

Wanted: Bug Finding Program [more inside]
posted by orthogonality on Nov 26, 2008 - 82 comments

Think you can stump the Elbot? Give it a try. Maybe your interaction will enable it to "learn" an extra 10% more to pass the 30% threshold of the Turing Test. The test is to fool a panel of people who talk with AI entities via text and guess if it's a real person or a robot.Mr Smarty Pants where are you?
posted by goodhelp on Oct 13, 2008 - 93 comments

Bletchley Park: A WWII juggernaut. It decrypted German Enigma (try one!) and Japanese messages on an industrial scale in huts and blocks, had an outpost in Mombasa, and built one of the first modern computers (it helped that Alan Turing was on staff). Now a diverse museum with or without a funding problem, it generated yet more intrigue in 2000 when an Enigma was stolen, and hosts a rebuilt, working Colossus that launched a cipher challenge. Beating it wasn't easy! [more inside]
posted by jwells on Jun 5, 2008 - 36 comments

The Algorithm: Idiom of Modern Science - an allegory told with iPods as Universal Machines.
posted by loquacious on Jan 19, 2008 - 42 comments

How I Failed the Turing Test.
posted by Citizen Premier on May 21, 2007 - 53 comments

Meet George -- 39, single, quirky sense of humour, looking for friends to chat with online. Last year, he won the Loebner Prize, to bots who can most successfully pass the Turing Test. More here from BBC. How long before we have our own Mefibots?
posted by amberglow on Sep 16, 2006 - 49 comments

Among his collected works, in the few, short years before mathematician Alan Turing was driven to suicide, he published "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis", theorizing how a standing wave-like distribution of "cannibal" and "missionary" chemicals might explain how plants and animals develop their shape and pigmentation. Blogger Jonathan Swinton focuses on this more obscure aspect of Turing's research, and reviews some of his posthumous and unpublished efforts — including one of the earliest known examples of digital computation applied to the field of biology.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Aug 7, 2006 - 10 comments

Somewhere between theoretical constructs like finite automata and Turing machines and feature-rich programming languages like Perl and C++ lives a world of misfits. These so-called esoteric languages frequently employ obfuscation and fustian as central design goals; but that doesn't mean you can't do some neat (useless) things with them.
posted by Plutor on Apr 20, 2006 - 38 comments

Go for the gold! Concord 2002: Site of the upcoming Loebner Prize. Can reigning champion A.L.I.C.E. repeat her triumph? Chat bots from around the globe are scouting out their rivals on the AI competitive circuit and studying their crib notes.
posted by otherchaz on Feb 9, 2002 - 0 comments

Given the recent cinematic floppery of late, I was pleasantly surprised when I came across an article about real-world Artificial Intelligence that was written in a solid down-to-Earth manner about some very technical concepts. If you're into AI it should be worth a look to you. How would you like to have a computer that learns and adapts? Heh...how'd you like your computer to pout because you won't buy the latest processor? ;}
posted by Spanktacular on Aug 29, 2001 - 5 comments

Has the Turing test fallen? One of the holy grails of computer science is the Turing Test -- and these guys think they're near to passing it.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Mar 1, 2001 - 37 comments

Fight spam with silly human tricks! This service is built around a low rent Turing test. Anyone who is not already on your list of approved correspondents gets their message bounced back to them. If the poor sod can't pass a "fast and simple" challenge, their mail won't be passed on to you as they'll be presumed to be a spambot. I use Pine: I guess I'd fail. (Found via Webmonkey).
posted by maudlin on Oct 5, 2000 - 12 comments