Machines and "Thinking"

There is no doubt that computer technology has improved greatly in recent years and that the capabilities of computers have increased many times over. Considering the rate at which these changes came about, it is likely that there will be even greater strides made in the coming years, creating computers that are able to emulate human thought even more closely. One of the areas of interest recently has been what is called artificial intelligence, or AI:

The objectives of AI are to imitate by means of machines, normally electronic ones, as much of human mental activity as possible, and perhaps eventually to improve upon human abilities in these respects (Penrose 11).

. . .
is to administer the Turing test, developed in 1950 by Turing as a generalization of a parlor game Turing called the "imitation game." The basic idea of the game is that an interrogator attempts to determine the sex of one or more contestants by asking questions and receiving answers in writing, and the goal of at least one contestant answering these questions is to cause the interrogator to make the wrong determination. No information is available to the interrogator other than the written answers, and at least one of the contestants answering questions is not obligated to tell the truth. The Turing test replaces one contestant who is not required to be truthful with a machine, and the purpose is to see of the interrogator can detect the presence of a machine. If the results of the game are unaffected by the machine's presence, the machine is said to be capable of thought because it is a machine that is indistinguishable from a human being solely on the basis of "written" interaction. The Turing machine itself has certain limitations, including linear access time for memory (it can only access a cell indirectly and must go through others to arrive at its destination), the need for reconfiguring the machine table to reprogra
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Approximate Word count = 1600
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)