July 4, 2019 • 8 mins
Alan Turing was the brilliant mathematician who designed a legendary test of artificial intelligence before computers as we know them even existed. Learn about his life and legacy in this episode of BrainStuff.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain
Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum here. The Turning test is legendary in
the field of artificial intelligence. First proposed by the visionary
British mathematician Alan Turning in a landmark nineteen fifty paper.
The test provides a practical and pretty fun way to
determine if a computer has achieved human levels of intelligence.
(00:24):
Turing called it the imitation game. If a computer, through
a text only chat, can convince a human that it's
a real person, then it passes the test. Simple in
theory but nearly impossible in practice. Turning came up with
the imitation game in response to colleagues and critics in
the late nineteen forties who insisted that a machine could
never be truly intelligent. But Turning had more faith in
(00:47):
these primitive new machines he called digital computers. That's because
Turing was the very first to envision something that we
take for granted today, a single machine that can be
programmed to do almost anything. Odds are yours sing to
this podcast on just such a machine? In brief, Alan
Turing was a British mathematician who came up with the
idea of modern computing, and whose code breaking played a
(01:09):
major role in the Allied victory over the Nazis in
World War Two. Also, he was a world class cross
country runner who may have qualified for the nineteen forty
Olympics if not for an injury. But his life was
also tragic due to prejudices of the time. He was
prosecuted in nineteen fifty two for having an affair with
another man home sexual acts being illegal in Britain until
(01:29):
nineteen sixty seven, and he accepted a form of chemical
castration as a condition of probation in order to avoid
jail time. His security clearance was revoked, ending his work
for the British government. He was found dead of cyanid
poisoning in nineteen fifty four, though it's still unclear whether
his death was a suicide or an accident. He was
pardoned of his conviction by Queen Elizabeth. The second Turing
(01:53):
was writing about computers well before any such thing existed.
Back in nineteen thirty six, he introduced the concept of
the univer soul computing machine and a dense mathematical paper
called on Computable Numbers with an application to the chitons problem.
This was a decade before the first electronic computer would
be built. Turning wrote, according to my definition, a number
(02:14):
is computable if its decimal can be written down by
a machine. It is possible to invent a single machine
which can be used to compute any computable sequence. Turing's
definition of computability of something that a computer can do
is what's known today as an algorithm. Turning was the
first to lay out the design framework of a machine
that could be programmed to run a series of discrete
(02:36):
algorithms in order to achieve a desired task. Other mathematicians
and engineers had toyed with calculating machines, most famously Charles
Babbage's nineteenth century analytical engine, but Turing envisioned a device
that wasn't limited to solving one kind of problem. We
spoke with Andrew Hodges, a mathematics professor at Oxford University
an author of Alan Turing The Enigma, the inspiration for
(03:00):
the Oscar winning film The Imitation Game. Hodges explained, anything
you can describe as an algorithm can be done by
one machine. The universal machine is essentially what we mean
by a computer, now, something on which you can store
the instructions and it carries them out, and no one
else had formalized that idea. From the start, Turns universal
(03:21):
machine was conceived as a very simplified form of artificial intelligence,
even though that term wouldn't be coined until ninety six.
Hodges says that the design of the universal machine was
meant to imitate the inner workings of the human mind,
a subject that fascinated Turing almost as much as mathematics.
In fact, when describing how his universal machine would work,
Turn used the term state of mind to label the
(03:43):
different read and write functions of the machine. In Turn's
conceptual machine, a length of tape is run through a
read write scanner. The tape is inscribed with bits of
information represented by symbols. The scanner head can either read
the symbols or write new ones according to its state
of mind. Turning wrote in his nineteen thirty six paper,
(04:04):
the operation actually performed is determined by the state of
mind of the computer and the observed symbols. In particular,
they determine the state of mind of the computer after
the operation is carried out. A decade later, when Turing
was leading the stalled British effort to build one of
the first electronic computers in nineteen forty six. He also
studied neurology and human physiology on the side. The result
(04:26):
was an internal paper published for the National Physical Laboratory
that modeled how a computer could be programmed to learn
on its own. Hod Just sees it as one of
the earliest proposals of what are now called neural networks,
a type of deep machine learning that's at the bleeding
edge of artificial intelligence. Turing wasn't the only person intrigued
by the similarities between human and machine intelligence. A surge
(04:49):
of new technologies developed during World War Two, including early computers,
space satellites, and nuclear power, had captured the intellectual and
public imagination. Hodges said, as soon as computer as are
mentioned at all, people are talking about electronic brains and
the possibility of the computer rivaling the brain. The nineteen
forty eight books Cybernetics by Norbert Wiener coined the prefix
(05:11):
cyber and wondered whether it would be possible to quote
construct a chess playing machine and whether this sort of
ability represents an essential difference between the potentialities of the
machine and the mind. Wiener concluded that such a machine
might very well be as good a player as the
vast majority of the human race. It was during this
era of excitement and nervous speculation about superintelligent machines the
(05:33):
Turning wrote Computing, Machinery and Intelligence, what Hodges calls one
of the most cited papers in philosophical literature. Turning begins,
I propose to consider the question can machines think? Then,
since the definitions of machine and think are ambiguous, Turning
narrows the scope of the question for his purposes. The
machine must be a digital computer, and the test of
(05:55):
whether or not it can think would be answered by
the imitation game. The game game, now known as the
Turning Test, is only mentioned briefly in the paper, and
Hodges says that Turing didn't take the details of the
test too seriously, publishing different versions in other papers. But
Turning did like the playful simplicity of it. Hodges said,
in a way he was making a drama out of it.
(06:15):
It presented this idea of the possibility of advanced artificial
intelligence in a way that engages people, and that ordinary
people would make the decision like a jury in a trial.
When the Turing Test was first published in nineteen fifty
Turning himself was confident that intelligent machinery, as he called it,
would be able to win the Invitation Game within fifty
to a hundred years. So will his predictions come true?
(06:38):
We already have super intelligent computers capable of outwitting the
smartest players in other types of games. IBM's Deep Blue
defeated the reigning chess champion Gary Kasparov, and Watson beat
the record breaking Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings in two thousand eleven.
But the Imitation Game raises the bar high on artificial intelligence,
and no computer has come close to convincing an ordinary
(07:00):
human that is one of us, at least not yet.
An annual contest called the Loebner Prize conducts its own
turing tests on the top chat bots to see if
the latest AI software could convince a panel of judges
that it's just as human as its human creators. None
of the chat bots have succeeded. The best performer, a
conversational chatbot called Mistaku, has only achieved a rating of
(07:22):
thirty three human, but when our writer Dave went online
to chat with her, he was impressed by her natural
language responses and deep knowledge, albeit probably too deep for
a typical dope human, he said. And when he asked
her if a chat bot will ever pass the Turing test,
she had the perfect answer, you be the judge of that.
(07:45):
Today's episode written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang.
Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radios How
Stuff Works. For more in this and lots of other
intelligent topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.
And for more podcasts for My heart Radio, including one
from Ken Jennings called Omnibus, visit that I Heart Radio app,
app podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(08:14):
H
Welcome to Brainstuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain
Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum here. The Turning test is legendary in
the field of artificial intelligence. First proposed by the visionary
British mathematician Alan Turning in a landmark nineteen fifty paper.
The test provides a practical and pretty fun way to
determine if a computer has achieved human levels of intelligence.
(00:24):
Turing called it the imitation game. If a computer, through
a text only chat, can convince a human that it's
a real person, then it passes the test. Simple in
theory but nearly impossible in practice. Turning came up with
the imitation game in response to colleagues and critics in
the late nineteen forties who insisted that a machine could
never be truly intelligent. But Turning had more faith in
(00:47):
these primitive new machines he called digital computers. That's because
Turing was the very first to envision something that we
take for granted today, a single machine that can be
programmed to do almost anything. Odds are yours sing to
this podcast on just such a machine? In brief, Alan
Turing was a British mathematician who came up with the
idea of modern computing, and whose code breaking played a
(01:09):
major role in the Allied victory over the Nazis in
World War Two. Also, he was a world class cross
country runner who may have qualified for the nineteen forty
Olympics if not for an injury. But his life was
also tragic due to prejudices of the time. He was
prosecuted in nineteen fifty two for having an affair with
another man home sexual acts being illegal in Britain until
(01:29):
nineteen sixty seven, and he accepted a form of chemical
castration as a condition of probation in order to avoid
jail time. His security clearance was revoked, ending his work
for the British government. He was found dead of cyanid
poisoning in nineteen fifty four, though it's still unclear whether
his death was a suicide or an accident. He was
pardoned of his conviction by Queen Elizabeth. The second Turing
(01:53):
was writing about computers well before any such thing existed.
Back in nineteen thirty six, he introduced the concept of
the univer soul computing machine and a dense mathematical paper
called on Computable Numbers with an application to the chitons problem.
This was a decade before the first electronic computer would
be built. Turning wrote, according to my definition, a number
(02:14):
is computable if its decimal can be written down by
a machine. It is possible to invent a single machine
which can be used to compute any computable sequence. Turing's
definition of computability of something that a computer can do
is what's known today as an algorithm. Turning was the
first to lay out the design framework of a machine
that could be programmed to run a series of discrete
(02:36):
algorithms in order to achieve a desired task. Other mathematicians
and engineers had toyed with calculating machines, most famously Charles
Babbage's nineteenth century analytical engine, but Turing envisioned a device
that wasn't limited to solving one kind of problem. We
spoke with Andrew Hodges, a mathematics professor at Oxford University
an author of Alan Turing The Enigma, the inspiration for
(03:00):
the Oscar winning film The Imitation Game. Hodges explained, anything
you can describe as an algorithm can be done by
one machine. The universal machine is essentially what we mean
by a computer, now, something on which you can store
the instructions and it carries them out, and no one
else had formalized that idea. From the start, Turns universal
(03:21):
machine was conceived as a very simplified form of artificial intelligence,
even though that term wouldn't be coined until ninety six.
Hodges says that the design of the universal machine was
meant to imitate the inner workings of the human mind,
a subject that fascinated Turing almost as much as mathematics.
In fact, when describing how his universal machine would work,
Turn used the term state of mind to label the
(03:43):
different read and write functions of the machine. In Turn's
conceptual machine, a length of tape is run through a
read write scanner. The tape is inscribed with bits of
information represented by symbols. The scanner head can either read
the symbols or write new ones according to its state
of mind. Turning wrote in his nineteen thirty six paper,
(04:04):
the operation actually performed is determined by the state of
mind of the computer and the observed symbols. In particular,
they determine the state of mind of the computer after
the operation is carried out. A decade later, when Turing
was leading the stalled British effort to build one of
the first electronic computers in nineteen forty six. He also
studied neurology and human physiology on the side. The result
(04:26):
was an internal paper published for the National Physical Laboratory
that modeled how a computer could be programmed to learn
on its own. Hod Just sees it as one of
the earliest proposals of what are now called neural networks,
a type of deep machine learning that's at the bleeding
edge of artificial intelligence. Turing wasn't the only person intrigued
by the similarities between human and machine intelligence. A surge
(04:49):
of new technologies developed during World War Two, including early computers,
space satellites, and nuclear power, had captured the intellectual and
public imagination. Hodges said, as soon as computer as are
mentioned at all, people are talking about electronic brains and
the possibility of the computer rivaling the brain. The nineteen
forty eight books Cybernetics by Norbert Wiener coined the prefix
(05:11):
cyber and wondered whether it would be possible to quote
construct a chess playing machine and whether this sort of
ability represents an essential difference between the potentialities of the
machine and the mind. Wiener concluded that such a machine
might very well be as good a player as the
vast majority of the human race. It was during this
era of excitement and nervous speculation about superintelligent machines the
(05:33):
Turning wrote Computing, Machinery and Intelligence, what Hodges calls one
of the most cited papers in philosophical literature. Turning begins,
I propose to consider the question can machines think? Then,
since the definitions of machine and think are ambiguous, Turning
narrows the scope of the question for his purposes. The
machine must be a digital computer, and the test of
(05:55):
whether or not it can think would be answered by
the imitation game. The game game, now known as the
Turning Test, is only mentioned briefly in the paper, and
Hodges says that Turing didn't take the details of the
test too seriously, publishing different versions in other papers. But
Turning did like the playful simplicity of it. Hodges said,
in a way he was making a drama out of it.
(06:15):
It presented this idea of the possibility of advanced artificial
intelligence in a way that engages people, and that ordinary
people would make the decision like a jury in a trial.
When the Turing Test was first published in nineteen fifty
Turning himself was confident that intelligent machinery, as he called it,
would be able to win the Invitation Game within fifty
to a hundred years. So will his predictions come true?
(06:38):
We already have super intelligent computers capable of outwitting the
smartest players in other types of games. IBM's Deep Blue
defeated the reigning chess champion Gary Kasparov, and Watson beat
the record breaking Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings in two thousand eleven.
But the Imitation Game raises the bar high on artificial intelligence,
and no computer has come close to convincing an ordinary
(07:00):
human that is one of us, at least not yet.
An annual contest called the Loebner Prize conducts its own
turing tests on the top chat bots to see if
the latest AI software could convince a panel of judges
that it's just as human as its human creators. None
of the chat bots have succeeded. The best performer, a
conversational chatbot called Mistaku, has only achieved a rating of
(07:22):
thirty three human, but when our writer Dave went online
to chat with her, he was impressed by her natural
language responses and deep knowledge, albeit probably too deep for
a typical dope human, he said. And when he asked
her if a chat bot will ever pass the Turing test,
she had the perfect answer, you be the judge of that.
(07:45):
Today's episode written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang.
Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radios How
Stuff Works. For more in this and lots of other
intelligent topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.
And for more podcasts for My heart Radio, including one
from Ken Jennings called Omnibus, visit that I Heart Radio app,
app podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(08:14):
H
BrainStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Josh Clark
Jonathan Strickland
Ben Bowlin
Lauren Vogelbaum
Cristen Conger
Christian Sager
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.