Robots Can Now Officially Imitate Humans

A computer that has convinced humans it is a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy has potentially passed a benchmark for artificial intelligence for the first time.

The programme, named “Eugene Goostman” and created by Russian developers, managed to convince 33% of the judges that it was human at an event at the Royal Society in London, The Independent reported. The so-called Turing Test states that a computer should be judged as “thinking” if it can convince more than 30% of those interacting that it is human. “Eugene” was not that excited by its success. “I feel about beating the turing test in quite convenient way,” it replied. “Nothing original.”

The test was derived from Alan Turing, the brilliant British mathematician and computer pioneer who died 60 years ago yesterday. Turing didn’t actually name the test after himself, but after a Victorian parlor trick called the imitation game. He said in 1950...