The turning of Turing's tables The Turing test as an anthropological thought experiment in digital game narratives

Abstract

Since Alan Turing’s original test in 1950 on the ability of artificial intelligences to emulate human behaviour, especially the capacity to have a polite conversation, to such a degree that an impartial human judge can no longer reliably tell the difference between an artificial and a human entity, the Turing test itself has become both a hallmark in the history of research in the field of artificial intelligence, and a well-known and often used narrative “topos” in modern novels, films, and video games. In this last context, the Turing test – in all its forms and variations – functions as a kind of thought experiment on the principal anthropological question: what does it mean to be (called) human?
Digital games do likewise, as the author argues. But instead of only utilizing narratively “passive” versions of the Turing test – in films and novels the viewer/watcher is not tested but only a witness to other entities being tested – some digital games also employ “active” ones, narratively testing the player him- or herself, stimulating the player to contemplate on the specific traits and characteristics that separate human beings from other entities, such as artificial ones.

In this article, the author introduces and analyses two of these games, "The Turing Test" (2016) and "The Talos Principle" (2014), arguing that the artificial intelligences featured in them are criticizing what is often effortlessly (and maybe arbitrarily) exclusively attributed to humans, like morality, creativity, language, or (dis)obedience.