Alan Mathison Turing: Astonishing Cultural Reappraisal

Currently, computers are used for everything in life. For example, from researching for a large essay project to playing video games with friends. “From the outset, computers were weighed for both military and commercial significance, and hence they straddled the very institutional boundaries that central to this study. It is also significant that computers became valuable research instruments in nearly all disciplines.” (Akera, 2). The first digital computer was constructed in 1946 by John Mauchly, a professor, and Presper Eckert, an inventor. “They met by chance in 1941 at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Engineering. They soon developed a revolutionary vision: to use electricity as a means of computing--in other words, to make electricity "think."” (McCartney, 1). They were ignored by their colleagues, but in 1943 they were becoming more well known and was funded by the U.S Army. The U.S Army was seeking for a contraption that can quickly calculate ballistic missile trajectories in wartime Europe and Africa (McCartney, 1). John Mauchly and Presper Eckert led a team that constructed the computer that occupied 1,800 square feet and weighed thirty tons. They named the large computer, ENIAC, Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. The process of building this machine was not an effortless task, Mauchly and Presper and their team had to overcome many problems

One of the hottest topics that modern science has been focusing on for a long time is the field of artificial intelligence, the study of intelligence in machines or, according to Minsky, “the science of making machines do things that would require intelligence if done by men”.(qtd in Copeland 1). Artificial Intelligence has a lot of applications and is used in many areas. “We often don’t notice it but AI is all around us. It is present in computer games, in the cruise control in our cars and the servers that route our email.” (BBC 1). Different goals have been set for the science of Artificial Intelligence, but according to Whitby the most mentioned idea about the goal of AI is provided by the Turing Test. This test is also called the

An extrinsic truth used is from a paper that was published in 1936 by Alan Turing in which Nicholas Carr said that he proved how the digital computer could be programmed to essentially do anything. In present time, Turing’s “so called” discovery continues to be true. The Internet has become more than a search engine, but also a big part of everyone’s life. From our map to our entertainment, the internet has surpassed basic research, and that is no debate.

Alan Turing had a hard life in his childhood. His parents did not take care of him because they were always on the move. Instead, they put him and his older brother in the care of people willing to take care of them. “While in elementary school, the young Turing boys were raised by a retired military couple” (“Notable Mathematicians”).

Although the effect of Turing’s contribution cannot be quantifiable in the Battle of the Atlantic or even the war in general, it is agreeable that with Ultra, the Allies had an upper hand in winning the war. The Allies essentially knew what the Germans were thinking, their ways, actions, and habits. This provided tremendous amounts of information for the Allies, which then benefited their strategies of approaching the

In a world that is currently dominated by computers, it’s hard to imagine what it was like before they were invented. Though computers only began having a major influence in the last 60 years, the idea for them was first conceived almost 200 years ago. This technology would not have been possible without the work of Ada Lovelace, who is considered one of the pioneers in the field of computer programming. She had a vision of the possible benefits and capabilities of a computing machine. Even though she would never see her vision become a reality, her legacy and work had a lasting impact on the future of technology. However, during her lifetime she experienced multiple setbacks in pursuing her education

1995 was an odd time for technology and computers. The word Personal Computer or “PC” was thrown around for the first time with advancements making it possible for just about anyone to figure out these new devices. Negroponte and Turtle both have some interesting things to say about technology and how it is becoming a large new medium for media. The first thing that I noticed while reading both these passages was how dated their statements tended to be. Early in Turkle’s reading she writes “If the person posing questions cannot say whether he or she was talking to a person or a computer, the computer is said to be intelligent. Turing predicted that by the year 2000, a five-minute conversation with a computer would fool an average questioner into thinking it was human 70 percent of the time. The Turing test became a powerful image for marking off the boundary between people and

He is not only the father/creator of the C programming language, but also the co-creator of the UNIX operating system. He is undoubtedly, the biggest innovator and creator in the field of Computer science. He worked with his longtime colleague Ken Thomson to create UNIX and for that they won the Turing award from ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) in 1983. He had a Bachelors and advanced degrees from Harvard University in the field of Physics and applied mathematics. Following his father’s footsteps, he joined Bell labs in 1967 and

In the film, Alan Turing named the code breaking machine “Christopher”, which was Turing’s first love who died from bovine tuberculosis. It depicted that Alan Turing was obsessed with the idea of using a computer to engineer a human brain or artificial intelligence to resurrect Christopher. In reality, the code breaking machine was called the Bombe or known as the “Victory.” Also, Alan Turing did not design the Bombe by himself, but it was partly designed by the Polish cryptanalyst Marian Rejewski. Alan Turing designed a new machine with a different strategy that was contributed by a mathematician, Gordon Welchman. Another historical inaccuracies in the film, the Bombe was suggested to be effective when the “deciphering could be made easier by looking for speculated items contained in an intercepted message (WIKI)”, a cryptanalysis practice known as the known-plaintext attack (KPA/ crib). In reality, the use of cribs was the main model of the Bombe’s principal design, rather than being an afterthought to the design. Another false history of The Imitation Game, after Hut 8 decoded the messages, they held off on telling their superiors because they were afraid that the Germans will became suspicious and change the code. In the meantime, Alan Turing and Stewart Menzies came up a system to decide which cracked messages should be passed along to the British. In

Alan Mathison Turing was a gay mathematician during World War II whose work is estimated to have shortened the war by two years and saved an estimated 14 to 21 Million lives. He is considered the father of modern computing due to his contributions to the area of study. There is an award as well as a Law and may buildings and statues in his honor. The man was a genius but was lost too soon due to his suicide whilst doing a procedure known as “Chemical Castration” to eliminate his libido due to homosexuality being illegal in Britain in the 1950’s. His many works have shaped the world as we know it today.

In “The Pattern on the Stone” by W. Daniel Hills, he begins the first chapter recalling his desire as a young boy to work in mechanics, such as building a robot. He goes on to illustrate the similarity with his Father. Hill’s father was an epidemiologist and they lived in Calcutta when he first discovered interest in computing. Hill clarifies how the computing world may be intimidating, but how you can deconstruct in order to get a better understanding.

Defining intelligence is extremely difficult and researchers now think that there are lots of different aspects to it, including; social, logical, creative, emotional and practical intelligence. The correct representation of the word is arguably a matter of opinion as there are many different definitions. With this argument in mind, it makes the task of arguing a Computers level of intelligence (if any) harder as, ultimately, each person’s definition could be different. A part of being intelligent is the ability for something/someone to be able to think for themselves which most computers aren’t able to do as they are simply programmed to perform certain functions which means that they are not in control of their response. However modern technologies have the propensity to make decisions based on an input from an end user. For example Apples ‘Siri’ service turns voice commands in visual and audio responses.

In his paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Alan Turing sets out to answer the question of whether machines can think in the same humans can by conceptualizing the question in concrete terms. In simple terms, Turing redefines the question by posing whether a machine can replicate the cognition of a human being. Yet, some may object to the notion that Turing’s new question effectively captures the nature of machines’ capacity for thought or consciousness, such as John Searle. In his Chinese room thought experiment, Searle outlines a scenario that implies machines’ apparent replication of human cognition does not yield conscious understanding. While Searle’s Chinese thought experiment demonstrates how a Turing test is not sufficient to establish that a machine can possess consciousness or thought, this argument does not prove that machines are absolutely incapable of consciousness or thought. Rather, given the ongoing uncertainty of the debate regarding the intelligence of machines, there can be no means to confirm or disconfirm the conscious experience of machines as well as the consciousness of humans by extension of that principle.

Alan Turing was a famous British mathematician and computer scientist who was determined to prove that machines at some point (possibly sometime in the future) would be able to surpass humans in intelligence levels. In order to prove this true, he created what became to be known as, “The Turing Test.” This test was basically to see if a computer could trick a person into believing that it was human. It would be asked a series of questions, which would be compared to responses of the human. It was designed so that one could judge the intelligence level of the computers’ responses. Turing believed that if a human could not tell the difference between another human and a computer, then it served as proof that a computer is equally intelligent as a human. Due to a large

The world of Computer Science has always been a fascinating field to me. Right from elementary school when I was taught about the evolution of computers, from the early counting mechanisms using the abacus to the ‘father of computer’s’ difference machine and down to reinventions of various concepts, to what we have now in our modern day world as efficiently serving computers. Also while growing up, I had an Uncle who lived with my family for a while. He was always trying to solve Computer Science related programs. In fact, his room at the time was like a Computer laboratory, with lots of gadgets and resources like infrared enhancing equipment, CPU systems all dismantled into little pieces, lots of books and encyclopaedias on how to be an excellent computer programmer, to different things I could not comprehend at the time but knew they were out of this world.