Domain

Remarks

Alan who?

• Alan Mathison Turing was as fundamental to the digital revolution as Sigmund Freud was to psychoanalysis
• His three major contributions are as follows

The Turing machine

• An imaginary machine capable of scanning, reading or absorbing instructions encoded on a tape medium
• As commands are being read, the machine responds and modifies its responses
• The output of this process, Turing demonstrated, can replicate logical human thought (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

The Universal Turing machine

• Since the encoded instructions on the tape govern the machine's responses, by changing these instructions, the machine can be used to perform almost any process which can be logically encoded

The Turing test

• An imitation test published in Mind journal in 1950
• A questioner closed away from 2 subjects - one human, one machine
• If the responses of both subjects are indistinguishable for the questioner to determine which is human or machine, then the machine can be said as "thinking" as well as the human

His vision

• Proponent of artificial intelligence
• Of people taking machines for walk in the park
• Remember the recent film "Artificial Intelligence" (2001)

His end

• Sentenced by British authority to injections of female hormones for his homosexual relationships
• He committed suicide in 1954