Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.

A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.

Bell Labs Cafeteria, New York, 1943: His high pitched voice already stood out above the general murmur of well-behaved junior executives grooming themselves for promotion within the Bell corporation. Then he was suddenly heard to say: "No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company."

Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.

We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields.

If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.

We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start with? Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English.