Computing Machinery and Intelligence

Summary

Proposes replacing the question "can machines think?" with a behavioural test, in which an interrogator tries to distinguish a machine from a human through written conversation.

Why it matters

It reframed an unanswerable philosophical question as an empirical one and set the agenda for the field. Russell and Norvig note that the same article anticipates machine learning, genetic algorithms, and reinforcement learning, and proposes teaching a machine as one would a child rather than programming adult competence directly.