Do Computers Really Think?

Do smart assistants demonstrate, or just mimic, intelligence? In 1950, British computer scientist and mathematician Alan Turing conceived of a test to answer the question, "can machines think?" If you carefully read his proposal in the paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, according to Jim Hendler, director of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Data Exploration and Applications, Turing believed language differentiated humans from animals, so if a computer could convincingly use language, then it could be considered intelligent. Today, there are plenty of voice recognition programs, such as Nuance's Dragon and Google's Voice Search, as well as voice-recognizing smart home assistants like Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri, but none of them are even trying to fulfill Turing's goal of thinking computers. Rather, they provide quick, transparent access to the vast storehouse of online data. "So far, all these attempts are just computerized idiot savants," says Hendler. "We are still no closer to understanding what intelligence is."