Human chess skill

Abstract

At one point in My Fair Lady, Henry Higgins cries out in exasperation: “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” Higgins, as you may recall, was an expert linguist who had taken on the seemingly impossible task of transforming an uneducated Cockney flower girl into a very proper high society lady. The task was a close analogue to the classical Turing test.¹ The requirement was really that Higgins’ protege successfully simulate the behaviour of a high society lady such that no observer would suspect otherwise.