Five machines were tested at the Royal Society in central London to see if they could fool people into thinking they were humans during text-based conversations.
The test was devised in 1950 by computer science pioneer and Second World War codebreaker Alan Turing, who said that if a machine was indistinguishable from a human, then it was "thinking".
No computer had ever previously passed the Turing Test, which requires 30% of human interrogators to be duped during a series of five-minute keyboard conversations, organisers from the University of Reading said.
'Super computer' dupes people into thinking it is a 13-year-old boy
Mega-Earth Is the Weirdest Exoplanet Yet
Looking at the Solar System, there seem to be two basic types of planets.
The smaller planets, including Earth, are dense, lower mass, and composed of rock. The larger worlds—Jupiter and the other giants—are massive, made of compressed gas, and possess no surface to speak of. As we learn about exoplanets orbiting distant stars, those two basic categories seem to hold. However, as astronomers map the landscape of planets, they are discovering worlds that don’t fit what we once thought, and which suggest a richer galaxy of possibilities.
Stunning fossil eggs provide insight on ancient flying reptiles
A spectacular fossil find in China - a prehistoric egg extravaganza from 120 million years ago - is providing unique insight into the lifestyle and gender differences of pterosaurs, the flying reptiles that lived alongside the dinosaurs.
Until now, only four pterosaur eggs had ever been found, and all were flattened during the process of fossilization.
But Chinese scientists said on Thursday they had unearthed five pterosaur eggs preserved beautifully in three dimensions at a site in northwestern China that also includes no fewer than 40 adult individuals of a newly identified species that lived in a bustling colony near a large freshwater lake.
Hundreds more fatalities if Keystone XL isn’t built? Not exactly
On Friday, the State Department revised its January report on the environmental impacts of building or not building the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline, including the number of potential injuries and fatalities if Canadian oil would move by rail instead.
The New York Times reported that the revisions projected “hundreds more fatalities and thousands more injuries than expected over the course of a decade.”
Greenpeace Erects Fracking Site at UK Prime Minister's Estate
As British Prime Minister David Cameron prepared for the announcement of a controversial new fracking law in the UK, Greenpeace activists gave the leader a taste of his own policy early Wednesday when they set up a mock fracking operation at his country estate.
Police were called after the activists, wearing hard hats and day-glo vests, erected security fencing around Cameron's cottage in the Cotswold hamlet of Dean, Oxfordshire. Signs were posted that read: "We apologise for any inconvenience we may cause while we frack under your home," and ordered complaints to be directed to the PM's office.
Alex Baer: Texas Tea, Coin Flips, and What's Missing
Here is a story about the present and the future. It is a story about energy. Now, it is a story about fracking. And, not to repeat myself, it is a tale about unbridled madness. Later, the story could be about something else.
For now, there are plenty of deep and scarring errors in this saga, but no redemption -- maybe in time, but not right now. Right now, there is only an equally deep, dank, and abiding feeling the world is no longer under any obligation to make sense, that some elemental bargain has been voided, that some vital bank of dead man's switches has been locked out and they no longer work.
4 Worker Fatalities Linked to Used Fracking Fluid Exposure
Field studies conducted by the U.S. Government have revealed that hydrofracking fluids are responsible for the deaths of four field workers since 2010.
The report, recently released by the National Institute for Occupational Safety, suggests that workers could be exposed to hazardous levels of toxic volatile hydrocarbons found in waste fracking fluids.
Millennials Are America's Most Godless Grown-Ups
While a plurality of Americans overall still believe in creationism, a majority of young adults believe in evolution.
Gallup regularly polls Americans on their beliefs about how human beings came to be. Overall opinions have stayed remarkably stable over time, with a plurality believing that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years.
Dear GOP: The US has negotiated with Terrorists and Amnestied Them all through History
The GOP talking points in response to the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in a trade for five former officials of the 1990s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) focused on a few basic premises. !. You don’t negotiate with terrorists; 2. such a swap would encourage terrorists to capture Americans; 3. these officials are the worst the worst.
Tagging movements as “terrorist” and then refusing to deal with them is frankly stupid. The Taliban in Afghanistan are not a small terrorist group like, say, the Italian Red Brigades of the 1970s and 1980s. They are guerrillas belonging to a movement that at one point had captured the state and run it. The Taliban are now a guerrilla group, holding territory.
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