The Turing Test: Passing Was Failing
Misreading Turing's Imitation Game and the Ontology of Intelligence
I published a paper challenging the dominant interpretation of Alan Turing's 1950 "imitation game" by arguing that the so-called "Turing Test" was never meant as a criterion for machine intelligence.
Contrary to popular belief, Turing's formulation was not an operational benchmark for cognition but a philosophical provocation-a trap designed to expose the fragility of human epistemology. The imitation game, with its gender-deception premise, did not test the machine's ability to think but the human judge's tendency to confuse mimicry with mind.
This reading clarifies Turing's often-overlooked hints about ontological independence, controlled deviation, and epistemic instability-and how contemporary AI discourse continues to fail the test, not by building better machines, but by misunderstanding the nature of intelligence itself.
Keywords: Turing Test, Artificial Intelligence, LLM, Turing Maschine, Intelligence, Philosophy, AI, AGI
Werner, Swen, Passing Was Failing: Misreading Turing's Imitation Game and the Ontology of Intelligence (April 29, 2025).
