The Art of Virtual Chat is Still a Work in Progress

Fifty years ago, the British mathematician Alan M. Turing predicted that by about the turn of the century, the average person would not have more than a 70 percent chance of distinguishing a human from a computer program trying to imitate a human in a question-and-answer session.

At Dartmouth College on Friday, such a test of man- versus machine-made wit proved at least one thing: to err in prediction is very human indeed.