Alan Turing Essay

Alan Mathison Turing was an English mathematician and computer scientist, famous for cracking the code the Nazi machine “Enigma” had used. This code was considered by many to have been undecipherable.

Alan Mathison Turing was born in Paddington, London on June 23, 1912. At a young age he displayed many signs of high intelligence. When his parents and teachers saw this, they sent him to the very prestigious Sherborne School at only thirteen years old. There, he studied math and science which sparked his interest for computers and coding. After finishing his studies at Sherborne, he enrolled at King’s College, or what is now known as the University of Cambridge. As he attended school there from 1931 to 1934, he developed a certain respect for physics and, more specifically, quantum-mechanics in which he proved the central limit theorem. His accomplishment was so massive that he graduated as a fellow at the school. Alan Turing, using his extensive

Tim Berners-Lee had a pretty normal childhood. He had three siblings, two parents, and lived in London, England. But inside his little household, were some pretty big brains. Both of his parents were mathematical geniuses, and that really encouraged him to do well in school. And, even at a young age, he was fascinated by electronics and mathematics. Little did he know that later in his life, those skills would really help him.

In history, numerous innocent people died due to atrocities. World War II is an historical event that can be considered as one of the most awful, deplorable, and destructive. Soldiers, mothers, fathers, adults, and children died. World War II resulted in the deaths of approximately 60 million people (Dan). Many nations, and groups mobilized together in order to fight back against the Nazis, including the scientific community. When United Kingdom declared war on Germany, Alan Turing and his team worked together to break the code of the Enigma machine and thus have access to the German military communication (Lendl). This essay is about Alan Turing’s accomplishments. In order to clearly explain his accomplishments, in this essay I will focus

It is obvious that the Turing test can be applied to computers from the arguments that he gave in response to the objections given in Computing Machinery and Intelligence. I will show that slight changes to these arguments can still allow passing, and will specifically demonstrate that these modified arguments support passing for cats and dogs. Turing’s idea of asking questions aimed to reveal mindedness, can be modified for pets; as mindedness is confirmed if and only if the interrogator is fooled into thinking that the pet is human too.

He worked as an apprentice and learned how steam engines worked, was another apprentice for Thomas Edison where he learned how to build and use light bulbs. He obtained some of his knowledge from Goldsmith, Bryant & Stratton Business College in Detroit. He also studied bookkeeping to learn how to document his experiments and research.

He attended both sessions of Congress, from 1837 to 1838 and another one in 1842 to 1843. During the last day of the session, which was March 3, 1843, he “spent the whole day and part of the evening in the Senate chamber, anxiously watching the progress of the passing of the various bills” (Morse) to watch the bill get passed, he was awarded $30,000 to set up the very first telegraph machine from Washington to Baltimore.

The Enigma was created at the end of World War I and patented in 1919 by Arthur Scherbius, a German engineer. The Enigma was a electro-magnetic ciphering machine and it was used by the German military as a way of communicating securely. As time went on, the Enigma was updated, and made more secure. It was used throughout World War II until the end of the war, though the Germans didn’t realize that the Enigma had been cracked by the British.

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.

He graduated from Williams College. He majored in physics, and he soon got recruited to work on the first atomic bomb. He was not happy when he saw the effects it had on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He used the money he made to fund a library in New York City. It was really successful, and it is still there today.

After his high school career he moved on to the University of Neuchatel where he obtained his Ph.D. During that time he created two philosophical essays and these would lead to his general orientation for thought process. Later in his life he spent a semester in the University of Zurich and began to find interest in psychoanalysis and this caused him to leave Switzerland and journey to France. After arriving in France he would go on to help study and standardize Burt’s test of intelligence and complete his first study on the

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

One of the most important needs for espionage was in the deciphering of the ENIGMA. [176] This was used to code and decode German messages sent and received between commanders and such. [176] It was very hard to decipher the ENIGMA because of the way it was set up. [176] What made it so difficult to decipher was the process by which a letter in an original message was transformed into a different one for the transmitted message. [176] The process involved, among other things, three motors in each machine that were chosen from a set of five. [176] Each of them had twenty-six settings, and a plugboard, which connected the keyboard letters to the lampboard letters. [176] For example the first time the L key was pressed a B might light up, but because the rotors turned further entries of L on the board would not produce another B but rather other letters. [176] US intelligence along with help from other countries was eventually able to make a duplicate machine that would help them in decoding messages. [177] Without help from espionage in this instance the US and their allies would be susceptible to unknown attacks and movements of armies without having a chance to

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.

What is socially appropriate? How or more so who decides what is appropriate? These questions have been asked, debated, and fought over since the dawn of civilization. The rhetor of the movie The Imitation Game integrates these questions into the true story of Alan Turing and the people around him. The rhetor allows these questions of appropriateness to be narrowed down to two very influential people in history to give these large, foundational questions a more personal touch, and for the audience to see the very personal consequence of society’s decision. Throughout the film the question of the appropriateness of differing sexual orientations, gender roles, and social norms are questioned by allowing the audience to see how these aspects have been judged in the past and the consequences of society’s decisions on a personal level.