TRUTH is often stranger than fiction, but the remarkable story of English scientist Alan Turing is truly an exception to the norm.

Although he spent most of his life toying with primeval computing systems and imagining their unlimited potential, Turing also squeezed in the time to defeat Hitler. As you'll recall from big screen depiction The Imitation Game, he was rewarded for services to Queen and country with chemical castration – for falling in love with someone who also possessed a penis. Without spoiling the ending, let’s just say there’s no chance of a sequel.

As early as 1950, Turing was convinced computers would one day possess “intelligence” – a forward-thinking leap of logic that initially attracted much derision and mockery from his more unimaginative peers. He who laughs last, laughs longest, however.

This week, omnipresent tech tyrants Google claimed the ‘Turing Test’ – his famous experiment to gauge when artificial intelligence can finally fool humans – has been passed for the first time ever by its latest creation. But, as ever with Google, all is not quite as it seems.

Turing may have had the foresight to imagine artificial intelligence, but he could never in a million years have predicted Google – humanity’s very own creepy Big Brother, who will only let us near his shiny toys if he can watch us play.

At the firm’s latest developer conference – dubbed I/O (short for input/output, although it looks like a dumbbell rolling a tyre with a stick ) – the least well-kent of Big Tech’s four horsemen, CEO Sundar Pichai, left an audience slack-jawed with awe when he unveiled a new development fresh from his firm’s top-secret AI labs.

The showcase was simple, but effective. A disembodied voice first spoke live to the crowded auditorium. What was different about this AI creation was that it sounded, quite disconcertingly, just like a real human. This 'ghost in the machine' then casually made a few phone calls all by itself – booking reservations at a hair salon and restaurant, despite possessing neither a belly nor a barnet. The "Duplex" project does have a brain, however – one composed almost entirely of phone conversations – hundreds of thousands of them, covering countless possibilities.

A sophisticated algorithm then takes just a fraction of a millisecond to pick the best bits and pieces from this mountain of intel when a response is necessary. Information is nothing without interpretation, however – and this highly-advanced chatbot deciphers basic human dialogue and accents very well indeed. Although, it must be noted, it hasn’t been trialled in Scotland yet.

In conversation, Duplex even hums and haws like your gran choosing rolls at Greggs. Repeated tonal variations of “mm hmm”, “ehhhh” and “ummm” won Hugh Grant a highly profitable acting career, and this AI's similar stuttery display certainly convinced the unsuspecting folk on the other line they were speaking to a fellow fallible human. For all the fanfare, however, it’s still really Just Eat with a voice, an anti-social ordering service for the terminally lazy to retreat ever further into their silos.

It’s undoubtedly an impressive technological advance – but proof that AI is now on a level with human intelligence? Not quite. Actually, it proves how far we are from it.

I.T's the economy, stupid

Duplex’s ability to book a simple appointment with a surface-level verbal exchange is certainly a convincing proof of concept. Even if it wasn’t, the firm’s echo chamber test audience of AI enthusiasts – a fervent mob braying and hooting for their own demise – wouldn’t have taken much convincing.

One can certainly be forgiven for being hoodwinked into believing software is smarter than it really is, however. At face value, this is a deeply impressive and disconcerting trick – but shoo away the hype and what’s revealed underneath is simply ingenious programming designed to perform a narrowly-defined task. In this case, completely taking you out of the equation when engaging with folk who want your money. And making your entire existence even less necessary than it is presently.

It surely won’t be long before an audience cheers on Google’s inevitable proclamation that there’s no need to be alive at all anymore.

Those who choose to keep on existing will merely be passive sandbags, carted from sensory pleasuredomes to nutrient stations by self-driving virtual reality pods. Evolution will soon relieve us of our limbs in that scenario, leaving ladder-makers and circus strongmen out of a job too. Retrain in I.T. now, lads.

It’s quite apparent that the dated Turing Test has become irrelevant to Big Tech. The real focus for Google, and the capitalist marauders they sell their services and software to, is on making human-machine interaction more intuitive and “realistic”.

With its uncannily human voice, the Duplex AI certainly passes the muster. But what’s actually more interesting than the hyperbole surrounding the software’s mimicry is how it will soon be applied to everyday life – reportedly as an alternative to infuriating automated call systems. A modern-day blight even Jesus would hate. The intent is likely to keep you on a premium rate line for longer, mistakenly believing you’re talking to a human.

Yet, Google itself admits Duplex's limitations. A spokesman confessed: “It can only carry out natural conversations after being deeply trained in such domains. It cannot carry out general conversations.”

What it will do, however, is potentially open up a Pandora’s box of new identity theft possibilities. In the near future, programmes like Duplex will have the ability to listen and then accurately replicate anyone’s voice. From Joe Pasquale to Darth Vader.

Try not to worry though. All you’ll have to do when a family member calls and asks for your bank account number is carry out your own “Imitation Game” test. Simply ask how much wood does a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. If the voice responds with an actual number – run. Your family are already dead.

Testing times for advanced A.I

THE Turing Test famously proposed that a computer can be said to possess “artificial intelligence” if it can mimic human responses under specific conditions. Also known as The Imitation Game, it requires three participants – a computer and two humans. A bit like Pong.

One human then engages in conversation with both the machine and the other person. If that person believes they’ve just spoken to two humans, then the Turing Test has been passed. And this week, it could certainly be said something along those lines occurred.

However, despite its reputation, the Turing Test is far from an arbiter of true human-like intelligence. Like Spandau Ballet, it is very much a product of its time – created in an era where it was impossible to gauge how computer systems would eventually evolve.

Pong itself would likely have been proof of alien intervention for Turing’s generation. Who knows what he would have made of Grand Theft Auto or naughty films on virtual reality.

Similar to how A.I. works in video games, the Duplex chatbot has been programmed with a huge amount of information for an algorithm to pick and choose from – but its “brain” is still just a limited footnote compared to the contents of the average human mind. Unless you’re Joey Essex.

Duplex's big reveal was certainly impressive, but phone chats with the local hairdresser rarely dive deep – unless you were that barber who convinced Elvis that he might be Jesus. He certainly had good enough hair.

Like Bobby Davro, however, Duplex is simply a savant mimic – not a genuine conscious intelligence. If you asked that unsettlingly “real” voice if pineapple is a pizza aberration, or if Die Hard was a Christmas film, be prepared for disappointment. An emotion you’ll already be familiar with if you’ve ever seen the Die Hard sequels.

A true hero of science

DESPITE his tragic end, the late, great Alan Turing certainly fitted a lot into his 41 years – a true renaissance man, his weighty CV would have cost a king’s ransom to post. Even second class. Which his degree certainly wasn’t. This was a genuine scientific revolutionary who achieved countless seismic breakthroughs while wearing the hats of mathematician, logician, computer scientist (before computers actually existed), philosopher, cryptanalyst and theoretical biologist. He could likely wiggle his ears too.