> Perhaps the real question is: if a chatbot is powered by a human instead of AI, but I can't tell because the interface is consistent, is it not a chatbot? Th

> Perhaps the real question is: if a chatbot is powered by a human instead of AI, but I can't tell because the interface is consistent, is it not a chatbot? The Mechanical Turk[1] was a hoax, not an early mechanical AI, so no. It's a chat interface -- perhaps with some pre-sorting and context-extracting preludes that save the human operator at the other end some time, but still just an interface -- between the human chat operator and you. ___ 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk