Four myths about Turing’s view of intelligence and his test

In current inquiry into intelligence, Turing’s work is regarded as foundational. Yet misunderstandings of his view of (the concept of) intelligence and his famous test of intelligence in machines are widespread. I shall argue that four standard interpretations of Turing and his imitation game are mistaken. First, that Turing was (in an influential sense) a behaviourist about the mind. Second, that his approach to the mind was (again in an influential sense) computationalist. Third, that Turing’s philosophy of mind was radically different from that of his contemporary, Wittgenstein, who in turn was a severe critic of Turing. And last, that Turing’s test has been passed by recent GPT models—with the result that we need a new test of intelligence in machines.