They are also able to classify and distinguish primitive actions. Kicking someone, for example could be a physical action that institutes 'hurt', while loving could be an emotional expressiong that implies 'affection'. Weaknesses Let's move on to a controversial subject involving understanding in natural language systems. In 1950, Dr. Alan Turing, a British mathematician who is now considered the father of AI proposed the Turing's test for intelligence. Specifically, the machine is a natural language system that converses with human subjects.
All communication is done through a terminal, input is done by typing.
There are actually very many pitfalls to the Turings test, and it is in fact, not very widely accepted as a test for true intelligence. Today, the Loebner Prize is a modern version of the Turings test. The criticisms surrounding the Loebner prize deals with how the Turings Test is carried out. The goal of the contestant is to fool or trick the judge into thinking that his program is a human. Thus, many contestants have been forced to emulate typing conditions of humans, i.e. text that is outputed comes out at varied speeds, sometimes words must be misspelled and corrected, incorrect punctuation is often used etc.