Some scientists and philosophers have argued that machines lack awareness

There's another aspect of the Turing test that's easy to overlook: it makes a virtue out of deception, forcing the machine to pretend to be something it's not. "This is a test of being a successful liar," says Hayes. "If you had something that really could pass Turing's imitation game, it would be a very successful human mimic.'"Of course, a computer's ability to act human is aided by the amount of information at its fingertips, and the rise of powerful Internet search engines and massive storage and retrieval capability is already paying off for AI. A good example is Siri, Apple's "intelligent personal assistant", which has become a big hit with iPhone users, chirping out birthday reminders, restaurant recommendations, and more. With the web at its disposal, Siri seemingly "knows" a great deal.
But is Siri merely simulating intelligence? Some scientists and philosophers have argued that machines lack awareness or consciousness, and that, as a result, their words are just empty chatter. Professor Roger Penrose of Oxford University has long argued that computers are missing something — he can't say precisely what — that is necessary for full-fledged consciousness and awareness, which in turn make intelligent conversation possible.What the Turing test measures, Penrose says, is the ability of a machine to dupe humans. "You make it look as though they understand something, when they really don't," he says. As a result the Turing test is only "a fairly rough test" of understanding and intelligence — though, he admits, "I don't know of a better one."
At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are those who feel that the difference between machines and humans is merely one of complexity. The staunchest defender of that view is probably the philosopher Daniel Dennett, of Tufts University in Massachusetts. Dennett rejects the idea that we have a mysterious "essence" endowed by our biological structure that underlies our cognitive abilities. "It's not impossible to have a conscious robot," he told me. "You're looking at one." What he means is that the human brain is the most complex known arrangement of matter in the universe.Perhaps, however, we're closer than we think to "true" AI. After the Wright Brothers's airplane lifted off in 1903, skeptics continued to debate whether we were "really" flying — an argument that simply faded away. It may be like that with AI. As Hayes argues, "You could argue we've already passed the Turing test". If someone from 1950 could talk to Siri, he says, they'd think they were talking to a human being. "There's no way they could imagine it was a machine — because no machine could do anything like that in 1950. So I think we've passed the Turing test, but we don't know it."