Intelligent Machines: Chatting with the bots

One of the ultimate aims of artificial intelligence is to create machines we can chat to.

A computer program that can be trusted with mundane tasks - booking our holiday, reminding us of dentist appointments and offering useful advice about where to eat - but also one that can discuss the weather and answer offbeat questions.

Alan Turing, one of the first computer scientists to think about artificial intelligence, devised a test to judge whether a machine was "thinking".

He suggested that if, after a typewritten conversation, a human was fooled into believing they had talked to another person rather than a computer program, the AI would be judged to have passed.

These days we chat to machines on a regular basis via our smart devices. Whether it be Siri, Google Now or Cortana, most of us have a chatbot in our pockets.

1. Artificial Intelligence - Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, as opposed to the natural intelligence displayed by animals and humans.

2. Alan Turing - Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist.