[js1138]

But were any 'bots voted to be humans?

Yes, but a description of the "contest" is in order. Terminals were set up in a public place -- I believe a university hub -- and all kinds of people wandered by for a chat. Participants voted on their impression of their chat partners. I believe the votes were spread out so that no chatter got 100 percent. But one woman, an expert on Shakespeare, and possibly having a "photographic" memory, was considered by the majority to be a program. Interestingly, there is no program that can match her abilities, at least in a chat situation.

One other thing. The chats were limited to a single topic at each terminal, so it wasn't a full-fleged imitation game.

[unspun]

Thanks for the explanation -- my oops that I hadn't caught the elegance of your humor. ;-` Of course the derned thing is that as sophisticated as a simulation might get, it is a sim. When someone learns to program the Divine Breath (or "spark") -- someone please be sure to let me know.

A suppose people with a mechanistic and constructivist view may wish to challenge. I'm also waiting to see if in Matrix-3, that all the "freed humans" are actually just computer generated characters, too.