“CAN MACHINES THINK?”

In his essay, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Alan Turing envisions the establishment of artificial intelligence that is capable of communicating in natural language, as he speculates, “Can machines think?” Turing, however, does not differentiate speech from thought within his definition, as ELIZA less likely exhibits faculty in simulating the latter. Though its design does adhere to Turing’s basic conception, ELIZA does not prove intelligence; rather, persuasively imitates it, as the program simply scans for keywords and applies them to larger databases.