Time: 30-45 minutes

Main activity: Turing test

• Prep:
  • find a website to host a quick chat, or use SMS
  • choose an automated AI agent like Siri, or an approach like reading the first line of the first result of a Google search
• Break up into two teams
• One team asks three questions; other team answers three times, either writing the responses themselves or using a computer to respond.
• Repeat, changing from human to computer or computer to human.
• Next, switch places and roles, with the team that was asking questions before now answering them and vice versa.
• Get back together and tell your guesses for which one was human and which one was computer!

We discussed whether computers could think. Can they do things smartly? Can they do all of the same things that people do? What sorts of things are they good at and what sorts of things of a bad at? And how would you be able to tell the difference if you were having a conversation with a computer or with a person?

Next, it was time to put our ideas to the test

… the “Turing test”

! We split up into two groups and chatted with each other. One group asked questions, and the other group gave answers: either they gave answers they made up themselves, or they input the questions into a computer and used the answers it gave! That way, each conversation was either with humans or a computer. The group asking questions tried to guess whether they were talking to humans or a computer. There were some big surprises! Sometimes the computer would get confused about “I” and “you”, and it gave some unexpected answers to questions about its favorite color and whether it had ever driven in a car.