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Analysis Of The Story 'The Long Years' By A. M. Turing

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The Turing Test, created by A.M. Turing, is a method which is used to measure a machine’s ability to display intelligence or thinking that is equal to or even indistinguishable from a human’s intellect. In Ray Bradbury’s story, The Long Years, Mr. Hathaway and his “family” are marooned on the planet Mars. Eventually, Captain Wilder and his crew arrive on the planet and discover something is off about the Hathaway family. Ultimately, the crew determines that Mr. Hathaway created a look-a-like robot family. Could the family pass the Turing test? The robot family has promising qualities to pass the test such as having conversations and possessing life-like skin. However, the inability to age, the absence of emotion and the lack of ability to drink wine demonstrates the Hathaway robot family would be unsuccessful in passing the Turing test. …show more content…
Even though the family most likely learned to have conversations in a way Turing describes as a “parrot-fashion” (473), nonetheless the family still communicates and interacts properly. For example, Mrs. Hathaway describes to Captain Wilder how she and her husband “for years on end we sat and talked” (Bradbury 461). She did this all while having an entire conversation with Wilder about Mr. Hathaway. Additionally, Captain Wilder, nor the crew, seemed to notice any deficits or errors in the family’s way of communicating. One of the main ideas in the Turing test is if conversation of a machine is difficult to tell apart from a that of a human (Turing 471). The Hathaway’s ability to communicate effectively without obvious error is an important and clear technique in passing the Turing

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