What does any of this have to do with machine intelligence?
Turing then proposed a modification of the game, in which instead of a man and a woman as contestants, there was a human, of either gender, and a computer at the other terminal.
Now the judge’s job is to decide which of the contestants is human, and which the machine.
Turing proposed that if, under these conditions, a judge were less than 50% accurate, that is, if a judge is as likely to pick either human or computer, then the computer must be a passable simulation of a human being and hence, intelligent.
The game has been recently modified so that there is only one contestant, and the judge’s job is not to choose between two contestants, but simply to decide whether the single contestant is human or machine.
The dictionary.com entry on the Turing Test (click here) is short, but very clearly stated.

Partly out of an attempt to pass Turing’s test, and partly just for the fun of it, there arose, largely in the 1970s, a group of programs that tried to cross the first human-computer barrier: language.
These programs, often fairly simple in design, employed small databases of (usually English) language combined with a series of rules for forming intelligent sentences.
While most were woefully inadequate, some grew to tremendous popularity.
Perhaps the most famous such program was Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA.
Written in 1966 it was one of the first and remained for quite a while one of the most convincing.
ELIZA simulates a Rogerian psychotherapist (the Rogerian therapist is empathic, but passive, asking leading questions, but doing very little talking. e.g. “Tell me more about that,” or “How does that make you feel?”) and does so quite convincingly, for a while.
There is no hint of intelligence in ELIZA’s code, it simply scans for keywords like “Mother” or “Depressed” and then asks suitable questions from a large database.
Failing that, it generates something generic in an attempt to elicit further conversation.
Most programs since have relied on similar principles of keyword matching, paired with basic knowledge of sentence structure.

Although Turing proposed his test in 1951, it was not until 40 years later, in 1991, that the test was first really implemented.
Dr. Hugh Loebner, a professor very much interested in seeing AI succeed, pledged $100,000 to the first entrant that could pass the test.
The 1991 contest had some serious problems though, (perhaps most notable was that the judges were all computer science specialists, and knew exactly what kind of questions might trip up a computer) and it was not until 1995 that the contest was re-opened.
Since then, there has been an annual competition, which has yet to find a winner.
While small prizes are given out to the most “human-like” computer, no program has had the 50% success Turing aimed for and pharmacists may breathe a sigh of relief that their jobs (for the moment) are still secure pending some future breakthrough.

Alan Turing’s imitation game has fueled many years of controversy, with little sign of slowing.
On one side of the argument, human-like interaction is seen as absolutely essential to human-like intelligence. A successful AI is worthless if its intelligence lies trapped in an unresponsive program.
Some have even extended the Turing Test.
Steven Harnad has proposed the “Total Turing Test”, where instead of language, the machine must interact in all areas of human endeavor, and instead of a five minute conversation, the duration of the test is a lifetime. James Sennett has proposed a similar extension to the Turing Test that challenges AI to mimic not only human thought but also personhood as a whole.
To illustrate his points, the author uses Star Trek: The Next Generation’s character ‘Data’.
Opponents of Turing’s behavioural criterion of intelligence argue that it is either not sufficient, or perhaps not even relevant at all.
What is important, they argue, is that the computer demonstrates cognitive ability, regardless of behaviour.
It is not necessary that a program speak in order for it to be intelligent.
There are humans that would fail the Turing test, and unintelligent computers that might pass.
The test is neither necessary nor sufficient for intelligence, they argue.

We fast forward now as to what is actually being delivered to an office environment.
In an earlier article published by i2P titled Avatars May Take Over Patient Communications – Where to from there? you will note some of the futuristic potential described in this article appears in a story prepared by Selina Wang, a reporter at Bloomberg News.
Her story follows in coloured text below the image and is titled:Here’s a Glimpse into the Future of Work: No Monitors, just 3-D Holograms