Turing Slip

English

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Noun

Turing Slip (plural Turing Slips)

1. A false but convincing statement generated by an AI system, arising from misinterpretation, faulty inference, or overconfident pattern-matching rather than malice or intent. The error resembles a human “slip of the tongue,” but is rooted in computational misunderstanding rather than human cognition.
2. By extension, any instance in which an AI confidently fabricates a plausible-sounding detail, fact, or interpretation as if it were true. Often detected when the claim contradicts verified sources or invents information that was never present in the input.

Etymology

Coined by journalist Clive Thompson on 23 April 2003 in a blog post on Collision Detection. Thompson proposed the term as the “artificial-intelligence equivalent of a Freudian slip” after Google News mashed together unrelated stories about Cherie Blair and Tony Blair.

“The machine’s facade of Turing-like intelligence slips for a moment, and you spy the algorithms at work… So I’m inventing a new term, right now: The ‘Turing Slip’. You read it here first!” (Thompson, 2003).

Usage notes

A Turing slip is not intentional deception. It is a seam showing through the fabric of machine intelligence—an abrupt reminder that the system assembles meaning by statistical association rather than actual comprehension.In contemporary AI discourse, the term is often used to characterise hallucinations that feel plausible but ultimately derive from mechanical inference errors.

Reference

Thompson, C. (2003, April 23). Turing Slip. Collision Detection. www.collisiondetection.net/