Computer fools users to think it's a 13-year-old boy

Human or machine?

The first computer program passed the Turing test for artificial intelligence, fooling humans at least 30% of the time that they were talking to another human.

The test is named after Alan Turing, a British mathematician and codebreaker widely considered the father of computer science. Turing developed the test in 1950.

The winning program simulates a 13-year-old boy named Eugene Goostman.

"In the world of artificial intelligence, this really is a milestone," said Kevin Warwick, deputy vice chancellor at Coventry University, who organized the test, in an interview with USA TODAY Network.

During the test, human judges had five-minute keyboard conversations with Goostman and a human simultaneously. After the five minutes, they had to choose which conversation was with the human. The program fooled one-third of the judges, Warwick said.

"When Eugene [Goostman] is good, it's very good. You can go through a whole conversation with it," Warwick said.

The test took place at the Royal Society of London on Saturday, the 60th anniversary of Turing's death and six months after his posthumous royal pardon. During his life, Turing was considered to be a criminal for being gay. He was pardoned in December.

Although others have claimed to pass the Turing test already, the test was not restricted to certain topics of conversation.

Vladimir Veselov, one of the computer programmers behind Eugene, said the program has been in development since 2001.

"Our main idea was that (Eugene) can claim that he knows anything, but his age also makes it perfectly reasonable that he doesn't know everything," Veselov said in a statement.

Unlike Siri or other chatbots, Eugene has a personality, said John Denning, one of the Eugene collaborators, in an interview with USA TODAY Network.

He can be obnoxious, opinionated and funny, Denning said.

"Back in the day, he cracked a lot of jokes about Monica's blue dress," he said.

The technology behind Eugene could help deliver better services to people, such as choosing the right health care plan, Denning said.

"But it won't be a smart-mouthed 13-year-old," he said.

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