A clip from the movie "The Imitation Game"
Portrays Turing's quirky personality.
Alan Turing took part as a key proponent in breaking the
German Enigma Code during WWII. He
joined a team of experts who worked at Bletchley Park with the GC&CS, the
British code breaking organization.
Turing was once again somewhat out casted by his colleagues because they
found him to be eccentric.
He
eventually designed The Bombe. It was an
electromechanical device that was able to decipher German messages encrypted
through the use of their Enigma Machine.
Turing went on to contribute to several crypto graphical developments
throughout the war.
While a
Bletchley Park, Turing took part in several endurance marathons. It has been noted that he occasionally ran
the 40-mile trip from where he worked to London when he was needed for
meetings. His times were comparable to
those of world-class marathon runners.
They began
work march 18, 1940 and by late 1941 were becoming frustrated with the lack of
financial backing they were receiving from the British government. On October 28 they wrote a letter directly to
Winston Churchill explaining their situation.
They mentioned how underfunded they were, and tried to prove how
valuable their assistance would be to the war effort.
After the war,
Turing worked on designing machines that would be the framework for the design
of modern computers. He believed that
computers were capable of being programmed so intelligently that they could be
considered intelligent.
My final
blog post will be the most philosophical of them all. In it, I will address the idea of artificial
intelligence. I will detail Turing’s
views on it, and then I will give my opinion on whether or not I believe
artificial intelligence exists or will exist.
I will examine the Turing Test, and see if it still holds up to the more
advanced computers of modern times.
Turing's personal story is tragic and infuriating, but his computing & AI legacy may still be wondrous and inspiring. What a visionary!
ReplyDeleteI agree. He potentially saved so many lives, but was still persecuted by his own country's government.
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