Though controversial, Turing's test did seem to have the right thought. He predicted that a robot would beat his test around the 2000s and in 2013, one did. But can robots really think? Should they be allowed to think? Let us know in the comments below.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, widely regarded as the world's first computer programmer, when talking about the Analytical Engine said, "The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything" [1]. Hence, it is safe to say that the question "Can computers think?", in some form, not only predates the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) but is almost as old as the Analytical Engine. This question has stimulated the minds of pioneers and researchers from different domains including computer science, mathematics, psychology and philosophy. This essay delves into some of the important facets of this question. It is primarily driven by the thoughts and arguments of Alan M. Turing and John R. Searle, two pioneers who have extensively explored this question.

In his recent book The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can't Think the Way We Do, AI researcher Erik J. Larson defends the claim that, as things stand today, there's no plausible approach in AI research that can lead to generalized, human-like intelligence. It's important to understand what the author is claiming- and what he's not claiming. He's not claiming that computers can never think like humans, as some philosophers of mind have claimed. Rather, his position is- if there's indeed a way to make computers think like humans, we haven't the foggiest what that is. Our current approaches- no matter how promising they might seem- are all dead ends. He contrasts this with the prevailing optimism about AI: the perception that current approaches are on the path to generalized intelligence, and the problems of this approach are, at least in theory, solvable. Thought this way, human-like computers seem just a matter of time. Larson, on the other hand, argues that even the fundamental theoretical principles of current AI approaches are non-starters. All of the current approaches in AI (or at least the most promising ones) are based on a certain model of thinking: inductive inference.

As AI enters our homes through smart home devices or tries to conquer our streets through self-driving cars, one need not be a Luddite to contemplate the potentially heavy implications of AI upon our daily lives and livelihood. The key to answering the question and indeed to understand the ultimate limits of AI is to ask if machines can really think. In this article, I list three tests drawn from three different disciplines to address that query.

The complexities of the mind mirror the challenges of Artificial Intelligence. This article discusses the nature of thought itself–can it be replicated in a machine? From Ray Kurzweil's revolutionary book The Age of Intelligent Machines, published in 1990. At a time when computer technology is advancing at a breakneck pace and when software developers are glibly hawking their wares as having artificial intelligence, the inevitable question has begun to take on a certain urgency: Can a computer think? In one form or another this is actually a very old question, dating back to such philosophers as Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes. And after nearly 3,000 years the most honest answer is still "Who knows?" After all, what does it mean to think? So let's try some others.

Artificial Intelligence has made great advances in recent years, with computer scientists developing cars without drivers, planes without pilots and mobile phones which can double up as a personal assistant. The legal profession is proving to be rich territory in the AI field too. Joshua Rozenberg meets computer scientists at the University of Liverpool, who are using'computational argumentation' to digitally decide the results of legal cases, proving that AI can be just as discerning as a court judge.