Alan Turing
Works of British mathematician Alan Mathison Turing explored the possibility of computers and raised fundamental questions about artificial intelligence; during World War II, he helped to decipher the German enigma codes and thus contributed to the Allied victory.
This highly influential English logician, cryptanalyst, and scientist developed and provided a formalization of the concept of "algorithm" with the eponymous machine, which played a significant role in the modern creation. People widely considered this father.
Turing worked for the government code and cypher school at Bletchley park, code-breaking center of Britain. For a time, he headed hut 8, the responsible naval section. He devised a number of techniques, including the method of the "bombe," an electromechanical machine that ably found settings, for breaking ciphers. After the war, he worked at the national physical laboratory and created the ACE of the first designs for a stored program.
Biology interested Turing towards the end of his life.
He wrote a paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis and predicted oscillating reactions, such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky, first observed in the 1960s.
Still illegal homosexual acts of Turing resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952 in the United Kingdom. He accepted treatment with female hormones (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison. From cyanide poisoning, he died several weeks before his forty-second birthday. An inquest determined suicide; his mother and some other persons thought of his accidental death.
Following an Internet campaign, Gordon Brown, prime minister of Britain, on 10 September 2009 made an official public apology on behalf of the government for the postwar treatment of Turing.
“It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers… They would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At some stage therefore, we should have to expect the machines to take control.”
“I've now got myself into the kind of trouble that I have always considered to be quite a possibility for me, though I have usually rated it at about 10:1 against. I shall shortly be pleading guilty to a charge of sexual offences with a young man. The story of how it all came to be found out is a long and fascinating one, which I shall have to make into a short story one day, but haven't the time to tell you now. No doubt I shall emerge from it all a different man, but quite who I've not found out.”
“I'm afraid that the following syllogism may be used by some in the future.Turing believes machines thinkTuring lies with menTherefore machines do not thinkYours in distress,Alan”
“A very large part of space-time must be investigated, if reliable results are to be obtained.”
“I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past. In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, 'And the sun stood still... and hasted not to go down about a whole day' (Joshua x. 13) and 'He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time' (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory.”
“I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.”
“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.”