At least, that is the claim being made by the University of Reading and it seems to have some credibility – as a computer entered into their annual “Turing Test” appears to have passed – convincing a third of the judges that it was a human and not a machine.
This definition of intelligence relies on Turing’s own – in his famous 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” (well worth reading, and no particular knowledge of computing is required) – a definition I like to think of as being summarised in the idea that “if something looks intelligent it is intelligent”: hence if you can make a computer fool you into thinking it is as intelligent as a 13-year-old boy (as in the Reading University case), then it is as intelligent as a 13 year old boy.
Of course, that is not to say it has self-awareness in the same way as a 13-year-old. But given that we are struggling to come up with an agreed scientific consensus on what such self-awareness consists of, that question is, to at least a degree, moot.
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