Computer Passes Turing Test*

A computer posing as a 13 year old Ukranian schoolboy passed the Turing test by convincing 30% of those tho "spoke" with it (via keyboards) that is was a real human.

Computing pioneer Alan Turing said that a computer could be understood to be thinking if it passed the test, which requires that a computer dupes 30 per cent of human interrogators in five-minute text conversations.

Key to this success I believe was the computer claiming to be a 13 year old boy, thus one would not expect it/him to be terribly glib or knowledgeable.

*Had the program claimed to have been a 28 year old college grad Obama voter, it would have done much better. Under that circumstance, a magic 8-ball might well have passed.