AI Chatbots Are Getting Better. But an Interview With ChatGPT Reveals Their Limits

In 1950, the English computer scientist Alan Turing devised a test he called the imitation game: could a computer program ever convince a human interlocutor that he was talking to another human, rather than to a machine? The Turing test, as it became known, is often thought of as a test of whether a computer could ever really "think." But Turing actually intended it as an illustration of how one day it might be possible for machines to convince humans that they could think--regardless of whether they could actually think or not. Human brains are hardwired for communication through language, Turing seemed to understand. Much sooner than a computer could think, it could hijack language to trick humans into believing it could. Seven decades later, in 2022, even the most cutting edge artificial intelligence (AI) systems cannot think in any way comparable to a human brain. But they can easily pass the Turing test.