Does passing Turing test show intelligence

Short answer: Passing the Turing Test shows that a machine can behave intelligently enough to be indistinguishable from a human in conversation. Whether this proves real intelligence (understanding, consciousness) is debatable, so most scholars treat it as sufficient evidence of intelligent behaviour but not a proof of genuine understanding.

The test

Alan Turing (1950) proposed the Imitation Game. A human interrogator chats through a terminal with two hidden parties, a human and a machine. If the interrogator cannot reliably tell which is the machine, the machine passes.

 Human  <----\
              \     +--------------+
               +--> | Interrogator | asks questions
 Machine <---/      +--------------+
 (hidden)            decides: which is the machine?

Reasons that passing the test does show intelligence

1. Behavioural argument: We judge other people's minds only from their behaviour. If a machine behaves the same, we have no fair ground to deny it intelligence.
2. Wide capability needed: To pass, the machine needs natural language processing, knowledge representation, reasoning and learning. These are the core abilities of AI.
3. Objective: It avoids vague arguments about the definition of "thinking".

Reasons that it does not necessarily show intelligence

1. Chinese Room argument (Searle): A person following rules to manipulate Chinese symbols can give correct replies without understanding Chinese. Similarly a program may manipulate symbols (syntax) without understanding (semantics).
2. Imitation, not intelligence: The machine only has to fool the judge. Programs like ELIZA and Eugene Goostman won over some judges using tricks (changing the subject, pretending to be a child), not real understanding.
3. Human-centred: A very intelligent machine that does not behave like a human (or makes no human mistakes) would fail, and an unintelligent one that copies human slips might pass.
4. Limited scope: The ordinary test is only text conversation. It does not test vision, perception or physical action (the Total Turing Test adds these).
5. Depends on the judge and the time limit.

Conclusion

Passing the test is strong evidence of human-like intelligent behaviour and a useful practical goal for AI, but it does not by itself prove that the computer thinks or understands.