Does Alan Turing Answer The Question Can Machines Think?

The meaning of the word “think” by itself brings about controversy and debate between psychologist and philosophers. Which is why answering the question “can machines think?” is almost impossible. This paper discusses Alan Turing's philosophy on the subject as well as modifications to his Turing Test for general intelligence. The Turing Test proves that a machine is intelligent but fails to demonstrate that a machine is not intelligent. Therefore, a series of test that analysis different forms of intelligence should be used instead. Since the word “think” can be assigned several meanings, Turing argues that the question “can machines think?” is too ambiguous. Instead, Turing offers the Imitation Game as an alternative test to replace this
When asked the right questions the test does measure some sorts of cognitive ability. Its shortcoming is that it does not encompass all types of cognitive ability fairly. One way to express this argument more clearly is through example. Suppose the imitation game is played by three persons. The first being the interrogator, the second being a person with no disabilities, and the third being a person with disabilities that prevents them from communicating. The third person would be immediately given away since they cannot communicate with the interrogator. It would be inaccurate to then concluded that this person cannot “think”, thus, in this scenario the Turing test fails. This same logic can be applied to digital machines. Passing the Turing test shows general intelligence, but, failing the test does not prove
It might be said that “if a machine is performing intelligent actions such as perception and decision making, but it is unable to communicate these actions verbally to a person who can judge its behavior as being intelligent or not, then it is impossible to prove that it is not intelligent.” This concern is a reasonable and brings up the following question, if we cannot test for intelligence via verbal or written communication, then how can we show that intelligence exist in some machine? If a human were unable to communicate to another person this might be answered with a series of test that checks for activity in certain areas of the brain. Since a machine does not have a “brain” that can be tested in the same way as a human brain. However, other test can be written to test for general intelligence in machines. Depending on what is being tested for, a program could be written that checks for cognitive like activity occurring in the