Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Pollette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: It's singing across from me as usual, his senior writer,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. There was what no one at the Mutant
Speaker 1: Hamster Races. We only had one entry into the Madame
Speaker 1: Curie lookalike contest and he was disqualified later, why do
Speaker 1: I even bother? Okay, I have no clue on that one.
Speaker 1: Trust me. We're about to talk about someone who's a
Speaker 1: real genius and so, uh it'll come through eventually where
Speaker 1: that quote comes from. So to start this this podcast off,
Speaker 1: we actually have a little Facebook feedback you be, and
Speaker 1: this comes from Brian, and Brian says, you guys should
Speaker 1: definitely devote an entire podcast to Alan Turing at some point. Well, Brian,
Speaker 1: that point is now, well, who we're gonna do a
Speaker 1: spotlight on Alan Turing. I first became acquainted with Mr
Speaker 1: Touring's name while reading a novel, actually Neil Stevenson's Cryptonomicon,
Speaker 1: which is, as you might guess from the title, very
Speaker 1: heavily oriented around cryptanalysis, cryptography and cryptology, which I find fascinating.
Speaker 1: That's basically they're all revolving around codes and code breaking exactly.
Speaker 1: And Touring was known as a very important person in
Speaker 1: the history of code breaking. Although uh, and it's interesting,
Speaker 1: I guess it depends on which circles you you talked to.
Speaker 1: You know what Touring was known for. So he's really
Speaker 1: known as a codebreaker, but he's also known as the
Speaker 1: sort of the father of computer science. Yes, that's true.
Speaker 1: That's true. Sort of depends on whom you asked. Very clearly,
Speaker 1: he had an extremely important role to play during World
Speaker 1: War Two, but we'll we'll get into that first. Let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about Touring and where he came
Speaker 1: from and and sort of his background. He's one of
Speaker 1: those individuals that the more you read about him, the
Speaker 1: more you realize how incredibly remarkable this guy was. I
Speaker 1: liken him to Ada Lovelace in a way. Ada Lovelace
Speaker 1: was another person who had this amazing ability to understand
Speaker 1: mathematics on a level that is is completely foreign to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I understand basic math. I don't understand
Speaker 1: mathematics the way Touring did, even at a young age.
Speaker 1: So Touring was born in nineteen twelve in Paddington, London.
Speaker 1: Both of his parents were from the upper middle class,
Speaker 1: which at that time was class was very very important
Speaker 1: in the UH in England still is to some extent,
Speaker 1: but not it's I don't think they're quite as class
Speaker 1: conscious as they used to be. But at anyway, he
Speaker 1: was born to upper middle class parents who got him
Speaker 1: into public school UM, and he had a keen interest
Speaker 1: in math and science, physics in particular. Yes, Uh, In fact,
Speaker 1: he was incredibly gifted in in mathematics. He was reading
Speaker 1: as a teenager. He was reading UH papers written by
Speaker 1: Einstein and theorizing on um the nature of relativity, and
Speaker 1: and really understanding it in a way that I still
Speaker 1: struggle with today. So clearly a guy who whose genius
Speaker 1: far outstrips any intelligence I might possess. I am more
Speaker 1: than happy to to admit that, because I certainly don't
Speaker 1: understand it on the level he did. While in school,
Speaker 1: he happened to meet a student who was a year
Speaker 1: ahead of him named Christopher more Comb, now whom he
Speaker 1: referred to as Chris, and Chris was another brilliant young student,
Speaker 1: someone who really had a very strong grasp on mathematics
Speaker 1: and physics as well. And Chris and Allan found that
Speaker 1: talking together that they could kind of understand mathematics on
Speaker 1: an even deeper level by sharing their combined perspectives. And
Speaker 1: they struck up a very strong friendship. And unfortunately, Chris
Speaker 1: died in nineteen thirty. He was he was not He
Speaker 1: was not a healthy young boy as it turns out,
Speaker 1: So by nineteen Chris dies and that left a huge
Speaker 1: gap in Touring's life. I'm sorry you're about to say something. No,
Speaker 1: I was. I was going to say, Uh, Jonathan and
Speaker 1: I took our our source information from a couple of
Speaker 1: really exhaustive sources. Um. I took a lot of mine
Speaker 1: from the from Touring's actual website, which is maintained by
Speaker 1: one of his biographers, Andrew Hodges. Yes. Yes, Andrew Hodges
Speaker 1: wrote a book called Alan Touring The Enigma. I highly
Speaker 1: recommend this book. I've actually I read it ages and
Speaker 1: ages ago, and I revisited it for this podcast, and
Speaker 1: it is a very good biography that that really kind
Speaker 1: of dives into not just the the accomplishments that Touring
Speaker 1: achieved during his lifetime, and not only in the and
Speaker 1: the foundation he laid for computer science, but also his
Speaker 1: personal life and how that kind of shaped what he
Speaker 1: did and who he was. Yep, I haven't read it yet.
Speaker 1: I want to pick it up. But the other source
Speaker 1: that I consulted for this, and I know that Jonathan
Speaker 1: did too, was the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which is
Speaker 1: an awesome site to have used it for other podcasts.
Speaker 1: But in doing the research and learning more about Chris
Speaker 1: more Com, I think that one of the interesting things
Speaker 1: that this pulled out for him from touring, based on
Speaker 1: the biographical the Hodges website, was that for some time,
Speaker 1: for two or three years afterwards, he spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time thinking about human consciousness and what happens to
Speaker 1: that information basically how I I assume from that that
Speaker 1: he was thinking about how the brain stores information and
Speaker 1: where that information goes when somebody dies. Right, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: became very focused on the subjects of mind and matter. Yes,
Speaker 1: where where does where does one begin? On the other end,
Speaker 1: are they one and the same? Is the human mind
Speaker 1: just a you know? Is it just a material construct or?
Speaker 1: Is there some other element there that is indefinable really
Speaker 1: as far as you know we can understand right now. Um,
Speaker 1: this kind of led him into a study of physics yep.
Speaker 1: And I think it has a lot to do with
Speaker 1: the uh, the genesis of the touring test, whether computers
Speaker 1: can can think. But these are things where we'll talk
Speaker 1: about more in a minute. But I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: that an event like this may have prompted him to
Speaker 1: consider more serious matters and and take him in different
Speaker 1: directions of study later in life. Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: I would definitely call that a pivotal moment in his life.
Speaker 1: One wonders what his life would have been like had
Speaker 1: had more Coum not died. So he graduates from public
Speaker 1: school and then goes to attend King's College at Cambridge University. Um,
Speaker 1: it's here where he really starts to study various kinds
Speaker 1: of deep mathematics, including probability and um number theory, stuff
Speaker 1: that goes well beyond my basic understanding. It's also where
Speaker 1: he first begins to come to grips with his sexuality.
Speaker 1: Alan tour ing if you did not know I was
Speaker 1: a homosexual, and he kind of really started to discover
Speaker 1: this during college and college was a pretty um open
Speaker 1: environment compared to his public school. Like public school was
Speaker 1: a very controlled environment, a very conservative environment, and the
Speaker 1: college as was almost the opposite. So Touring really experienced
Speaker 1: a complete change in culture by the time he went
Speaker 1: to college. So I'm sorry I was going to say that.
Speaker 1: He also during this period started to become involved with
Speaker 1: some very liberal thinkers of the time, UM, economists like
Speaker 1: like Keynes and Pigou. Um. You know, people have have suggested,
Speaker 1: I think that he may have been moving in so
Speaker 1: far as to be Marxist, but I don't believe he
Speaker 1: actually ever was formally affiliated with people like that. But
Speaker 1: he was. He was exposing himself to some very uh,
Speaker 1: some very liberal people at that point, and in a
Speaker 1: variety of uh ways of speaking about it. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of anti war intellectuals that he was
Speaker 1: he was friends with, or at least he moved in
Speaker 1: the same circles that they did. Um. He never really
Speaker 1: seemed to express a particularly strong political opinion. No, no,
Speaker 1: not not from what I've read. Um, this was in
Speaker 1: the in the early nineteen thirties, so we're talking the
Speaker 1: period between worlds World wars, one and two. Um. And
Speaker 1: of course economics playing a terrific part in terrific I
Speaker 1: mean very large part in uh, the outbreak of World
Speaker 1: War two. Um. So you know these are these are
Speaker 1: things much on the minds of of people in the
Speaker 1: very early twentieth century. Certainly right. So in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: four he graduates from King's College. In nineteen he's elected
Speaker 1: a fellow to the college, which means he actually draws
Speaker 1: a stipend. Uh. And in ninety six he's awarded a
Speaker 1: Smith's Prize for his work in probability theory. So during
Speaker 1: this period he was starting to specialize in quantum mechanics
Speaker 1: and logic as well as probability. And then we get
Speaker 1: to nineteen thirty six, which is the year in which
Speaker 1: he theorized in a device called the touring machine. Yes,
Speaker 1: this was purely theoretical, not an actual physical device, but
Speaker 1: he theorized that it would be possible to create a
Speaker 1: machine that could complete a computational operation the same way
Speaker 1: the human mind would. So it simulates what the human
Speaker 1: mind goes through to perform a very specific operation. Now,
Speaker 1: each each Turing machine could only perform one kind of operation. Yes,
Speaker 1: so uh, it wasn't like it would be like if
Speaker 1: you if you told one person they could only this
Speaker 1: is oversimplifying, but telling one person they could only add numbers,
Speaker 1: and another person they could only multiply numbers, they would
Speaker 1: not be able to swa oper roles at all. They
Speaker 1: could only do that one simple operation. You could give
Speaker 1: them different numbers, but they could only perform that one
Speaker 1: operation upon the numbers. Then this led him to then
Speaker 1: theorize a universal touring machine. Yes, something that could handle
Speaker 1: more than one task, right, it could. It could perform
Speaker 1: all the operations that individual touring machine machines could perform.
Speaker 1: So the universal touring machine was sort of really a
Speaker 1: theoretical computer. It was a computer that could perform any
Speaker 1: operation or algorithm, set of directions, set of instructions that
Speaker 1: the various other like individual theoretical touring machines could could perform.
Speaker 1: So again, this is all just the realm of ideas.
Speaker 1: Right now, we'd start at a physical machine. Yet, Yes,
Speaker 1: apparently um Touring believed that the universal touring machine. UM
Speaker 1: he probably didn't call it that. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: didn't read that, but that's of course what we call it.
Speaker 1: Um He believed that the universal machine would operate according
Speaker 1: to a table of behavior, which people likened to a
Speaker 1: computer program. So basically those were the parameters under which
Speaker 1: it could perform different kinds of operations. But it's just
Speaker 1: funny that he had his own language. It's funny to me,
Speaker 1: but it makes all the you know, all the sense
Speaker 1: in the world when you didn't already have a paradigm.
Speaker 1: You know, we call them computer programs because everyone else does.
Speaker 1: But he had his own language for this. But once
Speaker 1: you've understand sort of what he's talking about, you kind
Speaker 1: of go, oh, so that's what you think, right, So
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago by he gets a PhD
Speaker 1: in algebra and number theory, So no slouch there. Um,
Speaker 1: and and then he starts, um, he starts working on
Speaker 1: an interesting project for the British government. Um, so we're
Speaker 1: talking about eight. There's there's an event going on in Europe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a small event going on in Europe. There's a
Speaker 1: Germany is uh is becoming a bit of a problem.
Speaker 1: There's um, a World War two is breaking out at
Speaker 1: this point. I'm sorry, go ahead, no, as I as
Speaker 1: I previously alluded to, the the German economy has been
Speaker 1: very poor for a very long time for them, and
Speaker 1: so gradually as Adolf Hitler convinced that he could turn
Speaker 1: the country around where he given the opportunity to take
Speaker 1: the reins and take power. Um, he basically convinced the
Speaker 1: Germans that you know, he would be the leader that
Speaker 1: would lead them to greatness. And in doing so they
Speaker 1: militarized of course, and of course Hitler had another agenda
Speaker 1: in mind as well. This was brought to you by
Speaker 1: stuff you missed in history class. Yeah, but no, it's
Speaker 1: but it's interesting to think about that that Touring was
Speaker 1: involved in. He was interested in things like, you know,
Speaker 1: economics and things and mathematics. And the Germans had developed
Speaker 1: a very uh powerful mechanical code machine, yes, called the
Speaker 1: Enigma machine. Yes, so the German Enigma code machine was
Speaker 1: this device that allowed the Germans to encode um different commands.
Speaker 1: The Luftwaffa in particular was using it as well as
Speaker 1: the German Navy. Now, the luftwaff version was slightly simpler
Speaker 1: than the NAVL version, yes, and didn't have all that
Speaker 1: lent on it. Oh sorry wrong, Yeah, it was in
Speaker 1: the air as opposed to underwater anyway, Um, touring began
Speaker 1: to work on the Enigma codes and he developed a
Speaker 1: device of his own U actually he developed along with
Speaker 1: some other people. He worked with several other people on
Speaker 1: this project, but together they developed a device called the
Speaker 1: bomb b O M B e yes and this was
Speaker 1: a decoding device, and the Luftaffa codes ended up being
Speaker 1: the simplest to decode it. It It took more work to
Speaker 1: decode the naval ones, which were mainly UH concerning the
Speaker 1: U boats submersible vehicles, which was very important as far
Speaker 1: as the war in the Atlantic was concerned. Without those UH,
Speaker 1: without being able to decode those messages, the war may
Speaker 1: have gone very differently, at least the naval part of
Speaker 1: the war would have gone very differently. Um. So UH,
Speaker 1: he starts to break these codes, it's actually having a
Speaker 1: measurable effect on the war. It's saving countless lives on
Speaker 1: the Allied side. Uh. He also, in nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, proposed marriage yes to Joan Clark, and then
Speaker 1: he retracted the proposal. She accepted, then he had to
Speaker 1: retract it, and he explained to her. I think this
Speaker 1: was one of those moments where it was probably another
Speaker 1: defining moment where he told her that he was homosexual
Speaker 1: and that he wouldn't that his therefore he couldn't really
Speaker 1: marry her. And I think that was probably the moment
Speaker 1: where I mean, this is this is guesswork, but it
Speaker 1: seems like it's the moment where he decided that he
Speaker 1: wasn't going to pretend to be something he wasn't, which
Speaker 1: unfortunately would lead to tragedy further down the line. Um.
Speaker 1: So in in nineteen four, this is getting close to
Speaker 1: the end of World War two, he actually first started
Speaker 1: talking about building a brain, an electronic simulation of a brain,
Speaker 1: and what it would take in order to achieve such
Speaker 1: a thing, and this would sort of be an electronic
Speaker 1: version of his Universal machine. Now, back when he was
Speaker 1: thinking about the Universal machine, it would have been mostly
Speaker 1: a mechanical device, non electronic device. It was only through
Speaker 1: the developments of World War two, the techno technological developments
Speaker 1: of World War two, that electronics started to become more
Speaker 1: important than mechanical devices. So that's when he starts working
Speaker 1: in computer theory and and even computer software theory. Uh, again,
Speaker 1: this is all theoretical, but he starts to work. In
Speaker 1: forty seven, he starts working on the idea of programming
Speaker 1: and neural nets. That's fascinating stuff. Yeah, talking about networks
Speaker 1: essentially years before we would have computer networks of any size, right,
Speaker 1: and he was he was even thinking about creating some
Speaker 1: sort of mechanical network that would have some sort of
Speaker 1: learning capability. Yes, so it's not just that it can
Speaker 1: carry out instructions, but that it can learn from the
Speaker 1: instructions you give it and build upon that. Yes, so
Speaker 1: this is essentially artificial intelligence. This is really where he
Speaker 1: starts to to become interested in the subject of artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence and touring. You know, you could call him the
Speaker 1: father of computer science. You could also call him the
Speaker 1: father of artificial intelligence in a way. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Um.
Speaker 1: One other fascinating thing about him in that era, right
Speaker 1: and imediately post war um apparently part of his frustrations,
Speaker 1: as part of a way to alleviate the frustration he
Speaker 1: was feeling with getting his work done. Now, he wasn't
Speaker 1: really recognized for his wartime work because so much of
Speaker 1: it was top secret, so you know, it's a sort
Speaker 1: of a way to deal with the stress of that.
Speaker 1: He took up running and almost qualified for the h
Speaker 1: British Olympic team as a marathon runner. And it's just
Speaker 1: one of those things where I'd always heard about his
Speaker 1: mathematical work and his work with computers. Mean really, you know,
Speaker 1: he sustained an injury, which unfortunately prevented him from being
Speaker 1: really considered for that team, but as pretty remarkable. I mean,
Speaker 1: the guy was a phenomenal genius and potentially a world
Speaker 1: class athlete. Yes, there are stories about Touring, uh having
Speaker 1: fun by racing people cross the campuses of the various
Speaker 1: universities he worked at while they took public transportation and
Speaker 1: he would go on foot and beat them there. So
Speaker 1: I mean there was he definitely had a little bit
Speaker 1: of a playful side to him. Um So. In nineteen fifty,
Speaker 1: Touring proposes something that plays a really important role in
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence. It's called the Touring test. And this was
Speaker 1: in a paper called Computing Machinery and Intelligence, which appeared
Speaker 1: in the journal Mind in nineteen fifty. Yes, and uh,
Speaker 1: this was this was a really interesting philosophical point. Touring
Speaker 1: suggested that if you could build a machine that could
Speaker 1: imitate a thinking, living creature, um so that it could
Speaker 1: fool someone an interrogator, Uh, seventy percent of the time
Speaker 1: that the integator was talking to a human and not
Speaker 1: a machine. It would be said to pass the touring test,
Speaker 1: that would said it would be said that this was
Speaker 1: a machine that could at least simulate intelligence. And Uh
Speaker 1: Hodges has a great section in his website that goes
Speaker 1: into a discussion about Descartes. Uh and Descartes actually theorized
Speaker 1: about something similar to this ages before Touring. Descartes said
Speaker 1: that that if we could build a machine that could
Speaker 1: imitate a living thing, we would still be able to
Speaker 1: recognize it as a machine because it would lack understanding. Yes,
Speaker 1: so even if we could teach a machine to talk,
Speaker 1: it would just it would say words, but it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be meaningful. It couldn't respond in a meaningful way, so
Speaker 1: it could not be able to demonstrate any sort of
Speaker 1: understanding of what it was talking about. Descartes was actually,
Speaker 1: in a way, Descartes was really forward thinking in this
Speaker 1: because he was essentially stating that the problem of teaching
Speaker 1: a machine two comprehend and respond to stimuli is far
Speaker 1: more complicated than anyone would imagine. And it turns out
Speaker 1: that's true. It is really really hard to teach a
Speaker 1: machine too two detect, interpret, and respond to stimuli beyond
Speaker 1: a basic level, like you could teach a machine quote
Speaker 1: unquote teach a machine to detect temperature and move away
Speaker 1: from temperatures that are too hot. But two be able
Speaker 1: to converse is a much different task, much much higher
Speaker 1: level of thinking required in order to accomplish that task exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's that maybe why Touring specifically chose conversation as
Speaker 1: the task to test in the Touring test. It makes
Speaker 1: Some people have objected to that, saying that conversation is
Speaker 1: not really a test of intelligence, but Touring had various
Speaker 1: responses to these objections. In his paper, He said that
Speaker 1: this is a quote, I believe that in about fifty
Speaker 1: years time, it will be possible to program computers with
Speaker 1: a storage capacity about ten to the ninth power. Tend
Speaker 1: to the ninth power of what I have no idea
Speaker 1: because he didn't specify in this particular quote to make
Speaker 1: them play the imitation game so well that an average
Speaker 1: interrogator will not have more than seventy chance of making
Speaker 1: the right identification after five minutes of questioning. So the
Speaker 1: invitation game is kind of what I was alluding to earlier.
Speaker 1: You have an interrogator who is asking questions of two subjects.
Speaker 1: One of those two subjects is a computer, right, the
Speaker 1: other is a human being, and the interrogator doesn't know which. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has no way of seeing like the interrogator. It
Speaker 1: does not have a line of sight to the subjects.
Speaker 1: The interrogators essentially asking questions, usually like through a terminal,
Speaker 1: so you're typing the man and you're seeing the responses
Speaker 1: on the screen. Um. And after five minutes of questioning,
Speaker 1: if that interrogator is unable to determine which is the
Speaker 1: human which is the computer, then that device may very
Speaker 1: well pass the touring test. Now, when we say with chance,
Speaker 1: that means that over multiple tests, UM, with multiple interrogators,
Speaker 1: that that ends up being chance or better that um,
Speaker 1: the interrogators unable to make that determination. That's when you
Speaker 1: say you've kind of hit this artificial intelligence level as
Speaker 1: defined by touring. UM. Now, some people would say that, well,
Speaker 1: if you just designed a computer that had a deep
Speaker 1: enough vocabulary and a basic set of rules that told
Speaker 1: it how grammar works, so essentially a syntax telling it
Speaker 1: how syntax works, UM, it could possibly fool people, but
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that it's intelligent. Tourings responses, So what to
Speaker 1: your From your perspective, it seems as if the machine
Speaker 1: is intelligent, and isn't that all that matters? Right, because
Speaker 1: you could argue, well, I can talk to the dumbest
Speaker 1: person on the planet and they're gonna at least be
Speaker 1: able to understand certain things I say, as opposed to
Speaker 1: this machine that doesn't really understand it. Durings response to
Speaker 1: that is, how do you know? The only way we
Speaker 1: know that anything's intelligent is through our own experience. We
Speaker 1: don't like, Chris is looking at me, and I'm talking
Speaker 1: to Chris, but Chris doesn't know if I'm intelligent because
Speaker 1: Chris only has his own experience. He knows that he's
Speaker 1: intelligent in the sense that you know, he's able to
Speaker 1: think and process information. I appear to be able to
Speaker 1: do that, But that could all just be an incredible simulation.
Speaker 1: There's no way for you to know correct. Same thing
Speaker 1: with the machines. Turing is like, Hey, we can't really
Speaker 1: know that anyone else is intelligent, therefore it doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: so the same thing should apply to machines. Shut up
Speaker 1: at your face. I have long suspected that Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: is in fact a machine. Yeah, I you know, I
Speaker 1: let me put it this way. I want to be
Speaker 1: a replicant. I want to be a replican Okay, I
Speaker 1: like that one. Okay, so this is nifty. When he
Speaker 1: proposed the Turing test in nineteen fifty two, we we
Speaker 1: reach a really unfortunate time during Touring's life. The British
Speaker 1: government arrests him or for being a homosexual. This is
Speaker 1: again the the UK had very strict laws, conservative laws, UM,
Speaker 1: and he rather than going to prison, he elected to
Speaker 1: undergo injections which would decrease his libido hormone injections. Yes,
Speaker 1: so essentially this is it's chemical castration is what the
Speaker 1: what's technically referred to as UM. He did that for
Speaker 1: at least a year. UM. But part of that sentence
Speaker 1: also meant that he lost all of his clearance security
Speaker 1: clearance that he had as working for various UM projects
Speaker 1: and government uh well government projects as well as as
Speaker 1: his university once so he lost all of that. He
Speaker 1: lost his security clearance because UM he could not as
Speaker 1: as a convicted criminal could not retain it. UM. This
Speaker 1: possibly lead to depression. It's hard to say because he
Speaker 1: wasn't really communicative. But on June seven, ninety four, he
Speaker 1: took his own life. He committed suicide by ingesting cyanide pills. Yes,
Speaker 1: they they found him. Actually I believe it was his
Speaker 1: housekeeper who found him, uh with an apple which had
Speaker 1: been partially eaten. Um. Apparently the police revealed that they
Speaker 1: thought it was a suicide. Although the apparently the his
Speaker 1: mother believed that he might have been doing a science
Speaker 1: experiment with cyanide and had some on his hands and
Speaker 1: may have accidentally ingested the poison. And I actually saw
Speaker 1: somebody and may have even been in the Hodges reference
Speaker 1: where he They said he may have planned it specifically
Speaker 1: that way, specifically to convince his mother that it was
Speaker 1: an accident, to make her feel better about it. She
Speaker 1: wouldn't be heartbroken that her son committed suicide. Right. So
Speaker 1: when we say committed suicide, that's the generally held belief
Speaker 1: that was established by the police. Um. There are there
Speaker 1: is the possible there's the possibility that it was an accident. UM,
Speaker 1: although I can I think that's probably ah not likely,
Speaker 1: that's true. On September ten, two thousand nine, the British
Speaker 1: government UM the Prime Minister Gordon Brown, issued a formal
Speaker 1: apology to Touring for the way that the country treated him,
Speaker 1: considering that he was a war hero really and his
Speaker 1: contributions to computer science were phenomenal. Um. And they said that,
Speaker 1: you know, treating any human being that way was reprehensible
Speaker 1: and that it was inexcusable, and that they offered a
Speaker 1: very profound apology, not just to Touring, but to everyone
Speaker 1: who had to undergo this kind of oppression during that
Speaker 1: period of British history, and that that was just not
Speaker 1: it was it was inhumane, is what he was essentially saying.
Speaker 1: But that specifically to Touring, someone who gave such huge
Speaker 1: contributions to the United Kingdom and the world, it was
Speaker 1: particularly tragic. Yes, he certainly helped win the war for
Speaker 1: the Allies, or at least shorten it considerably, right, He
Speaker 1: saved countless lives, uh, you know, on on the Allied side.
Speaker 1: So he really was in every sense of the word
Speaker 1: a hero. Um. So it was you could say the
Speaker 1: cynical thing about, well, this apology comes fifty years too late,
Speaker 1: but ah, another way of looking at it is that
Speaker 1: it was it was a way of it was a
Speaker 1: way of admitting that these policies were we're wrong and
Speaker 1: I think that was. It was an important step really, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, to maybe change the mood a little bit,
Speaker 1: since its we're ending on a sort of a down note. Um.
Speaker 1: And when I say sort of, I don't mean sort of. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I had never heard before.
Speaker 1: Some people feel that there may be an homage two
Speaker 1: touring in one of today's tech companies, that being the
Speaker 1: logo of Apple Computer, the Apple with the bite taking. However,
Speaker 1: the original logo for the company, um, which is funny
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen it, and you see today's logo,
Speaker 1: they're completely different. The original logo looks like a woodcut
Speaker 1: of Isaac Newton sitting under the tree, you know, for
Speaker 1: the apocryphal story of the apple clunk and them on
Speaker 1: the head and going, hey, there's gravity. Uh. The Apple
Speaker 1: did not actually say that, No, it did not. Neither
Speaker 1: did he, but it is an appealing story. Oh, now
Speaker 1: that we've gotten to the core of that. Um, it
Speaker 1: apparently is not true. They were already using the name
Speaker 1: Apple and uh. Um. The different colors on the Apple logo,
Speaker 1: UM do not represent tourings homosexuality. Um. In fact, they may.
Speaker 1: They probably had everything to do with Steve jobs, wanting
Speaker 1: to promote the multicolor Apple two UM abilities, and so
Speaker 1: they added the colors to the logo for that reason.
Speaker 1: But it is kind of an interesting I mean, when
Speaker 1: you see it, you go, oh, well, you know that
Speaker 1: very well could be. I don't know that Apple has
Speaker 1: ever issued a formal um statement regarding that connection, but
Speaker 1: most people that I read on that subject say, you know, well,
Speaker 1: if Newton was the very first reference and they had
Speaker 1: already been calling themselves Apple, it's probably not an homage
Speaker 1: to Touring, but he certainly did make significant contributions to
Speaker 1: UH computer science. And I was even reading in that
Speaker 1: UM the about the new Jane Smiley book about remember
Speaker 1: when we talked about the very very first computer UM.
Speaker 1: You know, Touring was working all in the same time
Speaker 1: as the Soviet scientists and the folks at Iowa State
Speaker 1: back in the day, and they were all sort of
Speaker 1: working on different methods of getting UM, making mechanical and
Speaker 1: electronic calculations in different ways. UM. But it's it's fascinating that,
Speaker 1: you know, these pioneers were completely on their own, working
Speaker 1: independently from one another, and all making these significant contributions.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of a shame though, that Tourings contributions
Speaker 1: were known so much later because they were classified, and
Speaker 1: so people really didn't realize what an important person he
Speaker 1: was in the field of computer science until so much later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of his contributions, even the ones that weren't classified,
Speaker 1: um ended up being like he would get beaten to
Speaker 1: the punch by someone else, but intended to be people
Speaker 1: that he worked with that and and they were building
Speaker 1: on his work, and he was building on theirs. From
Speaker 1: from Hodge's book, I got the I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know how accurate the sentiment is. My own. My own
Speaker 1: interpretation was that Touring wasn't really he wasn't obsessed with credit.
Speaker 1: He wasn't really that wasn't important to him. What was
Speaker 1: important to him was making these connections. Uh. We didn't
Speaker 1: mention this, but towards the end of his life he
Speaker 1: Touring had this thing throughout his life where he would
Speaker 1: switch gears and suddenly be really interested in a seemingly
Speaker 1: unrelated field of study and yet find ways to connect
Speaker 1: it to things that he was already pretty well schooled in. Ya.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I'm sorry. At the at
Speaker 1: the time he died, he was involved in biology and
Speaker 1: physics experiments, which makes all the world of sense. You
Speaker 1: might say, cyanide, why would he have sign on in
Speaker 1: his hands. He's a you know, mathematician, he's a computer scientist. Now,
Speaker 1: he was actually interested in all kinds of science, right,
Speaker 1: so by the end of his life he was looking
Speaker 1: at biology and and nonlinear uh mathematics that apply to biology.
Speaker 1: So he, like I said, he was a really remarkable guy.
Speaker 1: He found connections between things that most of us we
Speaker 1: look at and we just think of as being completely
Speaker 1: compartmentalized different subjects, right, like there's a hard line between
Speaker 1: this subject and that subject. And Touring was saying, no, no,
Speaker 1: they're all the same thing. You just don't see the
Speaker 1: numbers like I do. And I'm thinking, Wow, this guy.
Speaker 1: And you know, he was reportedly shy and awkward, not
Speaker 1: a very good conversationalist. Um. I think I read somewhere
Speaker 1: that his speech was halting. Yeah, he sounds like he's
Speaker 1: kind of like one of those guys who was just
Speaker 1: perfectly happy to have his close set of friends and
Speaker 1: to be able to work on these these complicated problems
Speaker 1: and that was that was really all he needed. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know he and the fact that he was
Speaker 1: constantly learning was pretty inspirational too. So I guess that
Speaker 1: wraps up this discussion about Alan Touring. UM. Like I said,
Speaker 1: he's a very interesting person. You can find plenty of
Speaker 1: information on the web about him, and you can also
Speaker 1: pick up that book, the The Alan Touring The Enigma UM.
Speaker 1: That's a it's a good book, and the Stanford Encyclopedia
Speaker 1: has an exhaustive and exhausting entry just on the touring
Speaker 1: test alone. There's also an entry about Alan Touring himself. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's funny because you think in a philosophy UM
Speaker 1: material that he wouldn't But really, when you get down
Speaker 1: to it, the touring test is it's part computer science,
Speaker 1: part philosophy. Yeah, artificial intelligence definitely has a lot of
Speaker 1: philosophy to it. I should also point out that Touring
Speaker 1: was not really concerned with machines gaining any sort of
Speaker 1: UM self awareness or consciousness. He was talking on intelligence
Speaker 1: and consciousness as two separate things, which, as we've discussed before,
Speaker 1: you know that's that's an important thing to to distinguish
Speaker 1: intelligence and consciousness because you know, I'm often conscious, rarely intelligent.
Speaker 1: All Right, So if you guys have any comments, questions,
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future topics, especially you do I think
Speaker 1: we should do one on Bletchley Park. Oh okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: Bletchley Park. Let us know if you think that that
Speaker 1: would work, If you if you'd like to hear more
Speaker 1: on on that. Because the code breakers of World War Two,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's always fascinating. We can go into the
Speaker 1: Navajo codes and things of that nature. One of my
Speaker 1: first big articles was about code breaking. Big articles here
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com is well if you
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions, you can let us know
Speaker 1: on Facebook or Twitter are handled. There is text stuff
Speaker 1: hs W, or you can email us. Our address is
Speaker 1: tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris
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