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Have You Played... The Turing Test?

Come tut at Turing

The Turing Test is an experiment where you determine if an AI can pass itself off as human. You get a person to talk to computers and humans, over text, and see if they can determine which is which. The idea is interesting, but flawed.

The Turing Test is also a first-person puzzler made by Bulkhead Interactive, and it is the same.

It's very Portal. You're pitted against a series of glistening test chambers, with unkempt machinery occasionally intruding through an access hatch. These puzzles can't be solved by robots, apparently, which is the whole reason your crewmates have built them. They don't want the AI you're hooked up to getting in.

Problem is, at one point your HAL pal demonstrates that it totally could solve them. It says it can't think creatively, then suggests you chop your arm off to weigh down a switch. That's a decent joke, but it undermines the game's entire concept. The plot, the characters, everything, revolves around how AIs think - or how they don't. You can't just gloss over that for a limp limb gag.

Incidentally, the best way to convince someone you are human is to use the word "poop".

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Matt Cox avatar
Matt Cox: Once the leader of Rock Paper Shotgun's Youth Contingent, Matt is an expert in multiplayer games, deckbuilders and battle royales. He occasionally pops back into the Treehouse to write some news for us from time to time, but he mostly spends his days teaching small children how to speak different languages in warmer climates.
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The Turing Test

PS4, Xbox One, PC

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