Are robots are capable of intelligent thought?

Last weekend an experiment took place in Berkshire to see if robots are in fact capable of intelligent thought.

Scientists at the University of Reading tested five machines to see if they could pass themselves off as humans in text-based conversations with people.

No robot has ever passed the Turing Test, which requires the robot to fool 30% of its human interrogators. The test was devised in 1950 by British Mathematician Alan Turing, who said that if a machine was indistinguishable from a human, then it was "thinking".

During the experiment, five artificial conversational entities (ACEs) competed in a series of five-minute long, unrestricted conversational tests where the ACEs tried to pass themselves off as humans to the judges.

The tests took place as part of the 18th Loebner Prize for artificial intelligence – an annual competition which awards prizes for the most human-like machine of those entered.

During the tests, all of the ACEs managed to fool at least one of their human interrogators, and one robot, Elbot, came close to passing by reaching 5% below the pass mark.

The results actually show a more complex story than a straight pass or fail. Where the machines were identified correctly by the human interrogators as machines, the conversational abilities of each were scored at 80% and 90%.

This demonstrates how close machines are getting to reaching the milestone of communicating with us in a way in which we are comfortable.

That eventual day will herald a new phase in our relationship with machines, bringing closer the time in which robots start to play an active role in our daily lives.