h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

many years ago, when i was in high school, i visited the nearby university on open day. in the computer lab i was enticed to a terminal, one of the old green screens, by a message, if memory serves, to the effect of, 'ask me a question'.

i then spent perhaps 30 minutes having a conversation. at first i assumed it was a computer. i was of course at that time quite unaware of remote linking or networking. i then started thinking i was talking to a human. i daresay my first introduction to the idea that computers might be networked came somewhat unusually. eventually i fell back to thinking it was a computer, either because of repetetiveness, boredom, or stupidity. (the computer...not me).

to this day i cannot say whether i know which i was having a conversation with. certainly the bots online have never given me this level of uncertainty.

point is that the human at the other end is so potentially variable in expectation and awareness that the turing test cannot be seen as definitive. even an educated, aware and computer literate person woud be confused were (s)he confronted with software sufficiently ahead of their expectations of what were possible.