How intelligent are machines?
Alan Turing was a brilliant computer scientist and mathematician who made immense contributions to these fields, especially in that of computing as a whole. In 1950, Turing published a paper titled “Computer Machinery and Intelligence”. This paper tackles issues pertaining to the ‘intelligence’ of machines and computers. One of the main questions presented is whether or not machines are able to think. (For more interesting puzzle games, check out PuzzleCubesWorld for all kinds of amazing puzzle cubes)
Turing was highly optimistic about the developments in computer technology and understanding, and this led to his prediction that computers, by the year 2000, would be able to think and perform other tasks that only human minds can accomplish. There is some truth to this prediction, but also some false hopes. Indeed, computers are capable of performing tasks that are far beyond what was possible at the time of his prediction, but it is not as significant a change as he hoped it would be.
Bulkhead Interactive developed ‘The Turing Test’ to help determine some questions that still remain with regards to computer intelligence. The Turing Test is essentially a puzzle game. In this game, you have to explore a base that is set up on one of the moons around Jupiter, Europa. These puzzles are not meant to be easy for a computer to figure out. In fact, they have been reported to be made specifically to accomplish that level of difficulty for machines. Humans, however, are supposed to have a much easier time at figuring out the puzzles. Taking this into account, it seems then that this puzzle game, The Turing Test, should be able to help us get a lot closer to figuring out what it means to be human.
Bulkhead Interactive’s creative producer, Howard Philpott, had this to say, "As we were near the end of making Pneuma [the studio's first puzzle game] we did want more time
to polish it, but we had no money and needed to get the game out and into people's hands. The gameplay curve we had in Pneuma was okay at teaching you certain mechanics at the start, but at the end we had different mechanics, and it didn't teach you those through the gameplay. A lot of the time you were testing things out through trial and error."