What is the Turing test? And are we all doomed now?

Programmers worldwide are preparing to welcome our new robot overlords, after the University of Reading reported on Sunday that a computer had passed the Turing test for the first time. But what is the test? And why could it spell doom for us all? Coined by computing pioneer Alan Turing in 1950, the Turing test was designed to be a rudimentary way of determining whether or not a computer counts as "intelligent". The test, as Turing designed it, is carried out as a sort of imitation game. On one side of a computer screen sits a human judge, whose job is to chat to some mysterious interlocutors on the other side.