Can machines think? The question has been on the minds of many with the emergence of powerful artificial intelligence and ChatGPT, a deep learning machine that can converse with—and sometimes fool—human users. Users of the Bing search engine’s chatbot, which draws on ChatGPT technology, even report unnerving conversations in which the AI professes its love for them.

In 1950, Alan Turing had an answer to that question—a computer was capable of “thought” if its output was so convincing that a person interacting with it couldn’t distinguish its answers from those of a real human. The concept, known as the Turing test, has regained new prominence today as some argue that this new generation of AI does in