Question: What makes us human?

Richard Prince answered on 13 Jun 2015:

Hi Kitkat3,
You’ve asked probably the hardest question ever!
There are a lot of ways to answer this. One way would be to look at our genes… we share about 94% of our DNA with chimps (the estimate used to be higher (99%) but newer studies give a lower value), and about 99.7% with our nearest relative that we might regard as human – the Neanderthals. The Neanderthals had a human culture in the sense that they lived in groups, made art and almost certainly had language. But what about more distant ancestors? Was Homo habilis a human?
Another answer would be to say that it is our intelligence and ability to communicate that makes us human. But have you heard of the Turing test? It involves a human judge having conversations with subjects that could be other humans or could be computer programs (the judge doesn’t know). A computer program passes the Turing test if the human judge can’t tell that it is a machine. Would you classify an artificial intelligence as human if it could fool another human into thinking that it was a real person? By the way, the Turing test is what gave the recent film about Alan Turing (University of Manchester scientist!!) its name: “The Imitation Game”.
Best wishes
Richard