Ray Bradbury's The Long Years, Pass The Imitation Game

Can the family in Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Long Years”, pass the Turing test in the “Imitation Game”? Of course, we know that they are not really humans, but what if they were? What if we didn’t know? Let’s explore this. The Imitation Game is a theory developed to answer the question, “can machines think”? The author, A.M. Turing, theorizes that one could apply the elements of the “imitation game” used to determine a man from a woman with the use of only typed text to a computer and thus determine thinking. Turing believed that there would come a time in the future when computers could play the “imitation game so well that the average interrogator have not more than 70 percent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning” (Turing 470).

Even though, they had their suspicions based on the math of their ages, they needed outside proof to let go of the idea (Bradbury 459). The test itself only gives five minutes and the use of the typed answers of each participant. The Hathaway wife and children do not, however, possess Viva Voce, from the Latin meaning “with living voice”. This is not to say that they did not pass the Turing Test, but Turing himself stated that not until a machine can write or compose because of the thoughts and emotions felt and not by chance fall of symbols could we agree that a machine equals brain (Turing 472). The family did not express grief at Dr. Hathaway’s passing even though they would have passed the Turing test fairly well. Turing says in his example regrading Professor Jefferson that if the answers were as satisfactory and sustained as this, most would accept this test (Turing