Alan Mathison Turing was an English mathematician, logician,
cryptographer, and computer scientist. His
works have influenced the development of computer science, as well as played a
significant role in building our modern computers that we use today. Turing is often considered to be the father of modern computer science and artificial
intelligence.
As a student, he seemed to have excelled in mathematics as well as
physics. When he was 16, he was able to fully understand the works of Albert
Einstein. Not only did he understand them, he even expanded upon Newton’s Law
of motion.
During the Second World War, Turing was a main
participant in the efforts at Bletchley Park to break German ciphers. Amongst
the numerous scientists there, he maintained high reputation by deciphering the
German code within the first few weeks after arriving. He contributed several
insights into breaking both the Enigma machine and the Lorenz SZ 40/42, and was the head of Hut 8,
the section responsible for reading German naval signals.
His initial contributions to artificial
intelligence start in 1935. Turing first described an abstract machine
having a limitless memory and a scanner that moves back and forth using that memory, reading each symbol and writing its own
response to those symbols. The actions of the scanner would be controlled by a list
of instructions that would be stored within the memory itself in a form of
symbols. This is Turing’s initial idea of programs which he later further claimed that it
would be possible for the machine itself to modify and improve its own
programs. This abstract concept would later
become known as the Turing machine. The modern computers that we have today
derived from these initial thoughts.
Later on, Turing gave a public lecture to talk
about computer intelligence in London on 1947, saying, “What we want is a
machine that can learn from experience,” and that the “possibility of letting
the machine alter its own instructions provides the
mechanism for this.” He soon started brainstorming ideas and the central
concepts of Artificial intelligence, and wrote the report “Intelligent
Machinery” which he did not publish. The ideas on this report soon influenced
others to reinvents some of the ideas.
In 1950 Turing went off track with the
traditional definition of intelligence, by introducing a practical test for
artificial intelligence known as the Turing test. “The Turing test involves three participants: a computer, a
human interrogator, and a human foil. The interrogator attempts to determine,
by asking questions of the other two participants, which is the computer. All
communication is via keyboard and display screen. The interrogator may ask
questions as penetrating and wide-ranging as he or she likes, and the computer
is permitted to do everything possible to force a wrong identification. The
foil must help the interrogator to make a correct identification. A number of
different people play the roles of interrogator and foil, and, if a sufficient
proportion of the interrogators are unable to distinguish the computer from the
human being, then (according to proponents of Turing’s test) the computer is
considered an intelligent, thinking entity.”
(Britannica.com)
Towards to end of his life,
Turing's homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952,
when homosexual acts were still illegal in the United Kingdom. He accepted
treatment with female hormones as an alternative to prison. He died in 1954,
just over two weeks before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning.
An inquest determined it was suicide; his mother and some others believed his
death was accidental.
Alan Turing made great contributions to what we have today,
computer technology. Without his genius works and ideas, many of the technology
that we have today may not have existed. Through his works, which we still use
today, we can clearly say how much he has done for the development of computer
science, as well as the initial beginning to the thought of machine
consciousness, or artificial intelligence.
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