Wartime mathematician and father of artificial intelligence Alan Turing started something big by asking the question: "Can machines think?" From this came the Turing Test, a way of determining a machine's "intelligence" by how well it manages to trick people into thinking it is human.

On the 60th anniversary of his death, a chatbot named Eugene has apparently done this by convincing one-third of a panel of judges it was a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy. What does it all mean? Probably just that those online virtual assistants will possibly be less irritating than usual. You can chat with Eugene here: http://www.princetonai.com/bot/bot.jsp