>> A Turing test is based on the idea, you've got this right, that if you talk with the machine can can't tell the difference between talking with a machine and talking with a person, you call the machine intelligent. There are a number of bot Web sites that allow people to give a bot a Turing test. (Sounds vaguely smutty.) Tried a few. It's easy to make them flunk. Play Socrates. Ask them what meaning is, or ask them to define personal identity. Something like that. Programmers, being children of their age, design the bot to make a few coy, relativistic, banal replies, and soon the machine tries to change the subject. Don't allow the machine to change the subject and it will insult you. People --that is, people one might enjoy meeting at parties -- would either take up the Socratic challenge or offer an explanation as to why they are not interested in rarefied and abstract conversation at the moment. The only people who would behave like the bots are the sort one would not ask such questions in the first place. Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html