In 1950, a brilliant mathematician named Alan Turing asked a question that would shape the next century of technology: "Can machines think?" He proposed a simple test: if a human has a conversation with a machine and can't tell it apart from another human, should we consider the machine intelligent?

For decades, this seemed like science fiction. Early chatbots were laughably bad. They could barely hold a conversation about the weather. Then, seemingly overnight, AI got so good that millions of people started chatting with it daily.

But here's the fascinating part: Turing's question still doesn't have a clear answer. Today's AI can fool many people in conversation, yet it still can't do things a five-year-old finds easy. The history of AI is full of these surprises.