Moving Beyond the Turing Test

It is time for the Turing Test to take a bow and leave the stage. The way forward in AI does not lie in an attempt to flawlessly simulate human cognition but in trying to design computers capable of developing their own abilities to understand the world and in interacting with these machines in a meaningful manner. Researchers should be clearer about the distinction between using computers to understand human cognition and using them to achieve artificial cognition, meaning we need to revise our long-held notions of “understanding.” Understanding is not something only humans are capable of and, as computers get better at representing and contextualizing patterns, making links to other patterns and analyzing these relationships, we will be forced to concede that they, too, are capable of understanding, even if that understanding is not isomorphic to our own. Few people would argue that interacting with people of other cultures does not enrich our own lives and way of looking at the world. In a similar, if not identical way, in the not-too-distant future, the same will be true of our interactions with computers.