I wrote a paper on AI a couple summer's ago and as crummy, arrogant, short-sighted, and inconclusive as it reads, if you happen to skim it, I did come away learning this. . .Turing was one of the few minds that was actually on to something, his vision of the machine and his idealistic tone reads more like that of SciFi writer, here is a most insightful re-paraphrasing of a Turing abstract (me thinks it was his first major publication):
I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'"[8] As Turing highlighted, the traditional approach to such a question is to start with definitions, defining both the terms machine and intelligence. Nevertheless, Turing chose not to do so. Instead he replaced the question with a new question, "which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words".[8] In essence, Turing proposed to change the question from "Do machines think?" into "Can machines do what we (as thinking entities) can do?"[9] The advantage of the new question, Turing argued, was that it "drew a fairly sharp line between the physical and intellectual capacities of a man.[10]
[my crummy paper: http://www.scribd.com/doc/19590360/AI]