In his famous experiment, Alan Turing pictured somebody talking with another person and a computer, both of which are out of sight.  If they’re unable to tell the computer from the human being, the machine has passed the “Turing Test.”  But here’s a question for a human or a machine to answer:  Why did Turing pick speech as his proof?

The Test is usually described as way to determine whether a computer has achieved consciousness, but Turing’s original framing was more subtle.  “I believe (the question of whether machines can think) to be too meaningless to deserve discussion,” he wrote.  “Nevertheless I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.”

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