Hope this forum is considered the closest fit, wasn't sure whether to put it in here or just in Off-Topic. Reading an essay on the Turing Test today and it reminded me of a story I read when I was a kid. People and robots are in a war involving spaceships. A human ship receives calls for assistance from two other ships. For some reason they can't see the ships but they can target both of them with weapons. Each of the ships is claiming in its transmissions that it's a human ship and the other is the robot (enemy) ship. The transmissions are received in all caps. I seem to remember one of the ships sending a message like this to prove that it's the human ship:

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT ME TO DO RECITE NURSERY RHYMES MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB RECITE POETRY I NEVER LEARNED ANY. FORGET IT JUST SHOOT US BOTH"

The drama of the scene of course is that the humans in the ship receiving all these messages can't tell just from the messages which of the two is human or robot. I've tried googling to no avail. By any chance does someone here recognize the story?

I don't remember it specifically, but I'd be willing to bet $10 that's a Berserker story by Fred Saberhagen.

Edit: Found it, "Inhuman Error" from Berserker: The Ultimate Enemy.

Jeesuz! How did you! What the!

A war between robots and humans was a bit of a giveaway. And a lot of of the Berserker stories were like that, with ridiculously unlikely set-ups that would ultimately examine some aspect of what distinguishes humans from machines. The story that I think introduced the Berserkers, "Without a Thought," involved a guy delaying a Berserker by being able to play a checkers-like game even though he's being bathed in a beam that should reduce his intelligence. In fact he's set up a simple program using boxes labeled with board positions and beads so his semi-intelligent pet can play. I still remember it as being the first time I really understood how computer programming works.

I just found the book on Amazon. So awesome, thanks!

Because when the BMMB is at full strength, we are awesome.