"Creative writing used to be a human prerogative: do it well, do it badly, but either way endorse the consensus that to write about human experience was worth the candle and the coffee. Here was an essential human act, so much so that poetry formed a critical part of the computer pioneer Alan Turing's original test: to determine whether an unseen respondent to a series of questions was human or a mechanical imposter."
"Turing set out his objective: 'to consider the question, "Can machines think?"' In true human fashion, he immediately re-phrases the question, at some length, and eventually arrives at the 'imitation game', modelled on a drawing-room entertainment from before the internet, before television. The original game he has in mind involves a guesser in the hotseat who poses questions to a man (X) and a woman (Y), who are out of sight and hearing in a separate room."
Creative expression and poetry were treated as uniquely human activities and became central measures of intelligence. The imitation game reframed the question of machine thought into an interactive test relying on personal and literary responses. Examples of test prompts included mundane inquiries and demanding creative tasks such as composing a sonnet about the Forth Bridge. Participants sought to mislead or reveal identity through written answers, making the ability to mimic human-like responses the core criterion for judging machine intelligence.
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