The Turing test provides a popular benchmark for replicating human intelligence, but a better measure may be its lesser-known sibling the Lovelace Test, which measures whether a machine can independently create something original.
The assessment takes its name from Ada Lovelace, the celebrated computer scientist who envisioned machines that could create as well as calculate through an engine that "weaves algebraic patterns, just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves".
Professor Geraint Wiggins is one of the computer scientists teaching machines to pass her test.
The Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) professor holds PhDs in both computational linguistics and musical composition from the University of Edinburgh, and combines the two in his research into computational creativity.
Wiggins believes that machines can use creative thinking to find solutions to human problems that ordinary people can't even imagine.
Take a road junction that gets blocked when it rains and delays the lives of citizens. A human or an ordinary machine would make an obvious recommendation, such as building a new road. A creative computer could conceive of a solution that is beyond the minds of humans.
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