What is the Turing test?

British mathematician Alan Turing proposed the idea in a 1950 paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”, calling it the “imitation game”. A human judge chats by text with a hidden human and a hidden machine; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, the machine is said to pass. Turing predicted that by around 2000 computers would fool average judges 30 percent of the time after five minutes of questioning. Modern AI chatbots have fooled many people in studies, reigniting debate about whether the test really measures intelligence or just convincing imitation.