A computer program created by a team of Russian scientists became the first computer to pass the 65-year-old Turing Test by fooling judges in the U.K. into believing it was a human.
33 percent of the people who participated in five-minute keyboard conversations with the program at the Royal Society in London thought it was a 13-year-old boy named "Eugene Goostman", according to NBC News.
The test is named after Alan Turing, who is considered "the father of modern computer science."
The University of Reading organized the event on Saturday, CNET reported.
"Some will claim that the Test has already been passed," said Professor Ken Warwrick, who visited the university. "The words Turing Test have been applied to similar competitions around the world. However this event involved the most simultaneous comparison tests than ever before, was independently verified and, crucially, the conversations were unrestricted. A true Turing Test does not set the questions or topics prior to the conversations. We are therefore proud to declare that Alan Turing's Test was passed for the first time on Saturday."
A computer passes the test if it can trick over 30 percent of the judges into thinking it's a person, NBC News reported.
The university said "Eugene" was created by development engineer Vladimir Veselov and software engineer Eugene Demchenko in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The program was the only one out of four that successfully imitated a person.
"Our whole team is very excited with this result," Veselov said. "Going forward we plan to make Eugene smarter and continue working on improving what we refer to as 'conversation logic.'"
John Denning, director of the project, said that while the test was done in English, the program had a conversation-style written by people who didn't speak English and had to analyze the language, NBC News reported.
Warwick said the program's ability to imitate a person gives it the potential to be used to fight cyber-crime.
"Online, real-time communication of this type can influence an individual human in such a way that they are fooled into believing something is true ... when in fact it is not," he said.
