Historical and contemporary papers on the philosophical issues raised by the Turing Test as a criterion for intelligence.The Turing Test is part of the vocabulary of popular culture— it has appeared in works ranging from the Broadway play "Breaking the Code" to the comic strip "Robotman." The writings collected by Stuart Shieber for this book examine the profound philosophical issues surrounding the Turing Test as a criterion for intelligence.

Alan Turing' s idea, originally expressed in a 1950 paper titled "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" and published in the journal Mind, proposed an "indistinguishability test" that compared artifact and person.