Posts Tagged: Alan Turing

Logic/Math — No Comments
6
Oct 09

Apology to Alan Turing

turingI’m rather late on the draw in regard to this note, but I just wanted to say that I was profoundly glad to hear that the Prime Minister of England released a letter of apology on September 10 recognizing Alan Turing for his monumental “contribution to humankind”, including work in computation, mathematics, and code-breaking.

Despite his contributions, Turing was convicted under English homophobic laws and sentenced to chemical castration. As PM Brown writes, “In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay.” Given the choice between going to prison and undergoing hormone treatments, he chose the latter. Less than three years later Turing was found dead, apparently the result of a cyanide overdose. His death was judged to be a suicide.

While the note obviously cannot change the past, I’m glad to see the British government deliver the note. And I’m extremely proud of those individuals who lobbied the government to acknowledge this terrible mistake. Again, as PM Brown wrote, “So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.” So very true.

Entertainment — 1 Comment
19
Feb 09

BBC Dangerous Knowledge Documentary

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In 2007 BBC Four released a documentary named Dangerous Knowledge, which is summarized on the official page as follows:

In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians – Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing – whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide.

Sounds uplifting, huh? Well, David Malone, the British filmmaker, does a really great job tracing how mathematical ideas tie together the four individuals through history. While some of the films claims are a bit…over the top and dramatic,  overall the content is solid and quite informative. There’s a lot of information given not only about mathematics, but about how these four individuals dealt with various difficult aspects of their personal lives. These videos may still be up on YouTube, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for them being there for long given the copy protection issues involved. Having said that, I won’t even attempt to embed one of the videos here. But you CAN watch a clip directly from the BBC 4 official page by clicking here. If provided with the opportunity, you should take advantage of checking it out the program in its entirety.

Machine Learning — 1 Comment
27
May 07

Failing the Turing Test

turingI can’t remember exactly how I came across this hilarious article, but I highly suggest checking it out (warning: it contains what some might deem slightly offensive language). It’s all about a guy named Jason who keeps being mistaken for a robot in his instant messaging conversations. It’s highly amusing. For those of you who don’t know, Alan Turing proposed a test in 1950 to gauge whether or not a computer can think. Here’s briefly (and incompletely) how the test goes:

  1. Recruit two humans, one to participate in the test and the other to judge it.
  2. Recruit a computer whose inventor claims it can think.
  3. Put the human judge in a room that contains only a device capable of receiving and sending text messages.
  4. Have the human judge type questions into this device which she would like to ask the human participant and “thinking” computer.
  5. One question at a time, the “thinking” computer and human participant answer these questions by writing out text answers and transmitting them back to the device in the room with the judge.
  6. If the judge cannot determine through the answers to these questions who is the human participant and who is the “thinking” computer, the computer wins and passes the test. In other words, since the computer tricked the judge, it can be said to think.

This is a simplistic version of the test, but it’s definitely the gist of it. In Turing’s paper he guessed that by the year 2000 a computer would have been built that was able to pass the test. He was wrong. Even now, in 2007, a computer hasn’t been built that has consistently passed this test. Interesting, huh? The full text of Turing’s paper which details the Turing test can be read here. The article is called “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”. It’s an accessible paper for anyone with these types of interests. And for more information regarding the Turing test, check out its Wikipedia article here.

Entertainment — No Comments
27
Oct 06

Turing Pumpkin

turingpumpkinHow could I NOT include this picture of a pumpkin carved into the likeness of Alan Turing? It just wouldn’t be right to overlook this one! Read more about Turing here. In case you don’t know much about Turing, let’s just say he laid a substantial foundation for computer science.

Also, here’s a post from Boing Boing describing some mystery explosions that seem to be occurring around the world. More Halloween goodness!

Logic/Math / Technology — No Comments
16
Sep 06

Philosophy In Computer Science

turingI was meandering through the Slashdot archives this evening and came across this discussion about philosophy’s role in computer science. I think the conversation is illuminating on several levels. There are blatant IT professionals coming from one angle versus hard-core philosophers coming from another. While there’s a lot of overlap in perspective each person tends to accentuate a particular part of the (dis?)connection. I think the threads are worth reading both from a professional and an academic standpoint.

There are obvious links between the disciplines, notably the fact that concepts such as computability were born from the work of folks like A.M. Turing, but I often wonder if computer scientists think about this with any sort of regularity.