Alan Turing Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

Alan Turing
A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.

Alan Turing
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.

Alan Turing
Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.

Alan Turing
Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity. The activity of the intuition consists in making spontaneous judgements which are not the result of conscious trains of reasoning... The exercise of ingenuity in mathematics consists in aiding the intuition through suitable arrangements of propositions, and perhaps geometrical figures or drawings.

Alan Turing
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.

Alan Turing
Instead of trying to produce a programme to simulate the adult mind, why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child's? If this were then subjected to an appropriate course of education one would obtain the adult brain.

Alan Turing
The idea behind digital computers may be explained by saying that these machines are intended to carry out any operations which could be done by a human computer.

Alan Turing
We are not asking whether all digital computers would do well in the game nor whether the computers at present available would do well, but whether there are imaginable computers which would do well.

Alan Turing
A very large part of space-time must be investigated, if reliable results are to be obtained.

Alan Turing
The Exclusion Principle is laid down purely for the benefit of the electrons themselves, who might be corrupted (and become dragons or demons) if allowed to associate too freely.

Alan Turing
May not machines carry out something which ought to be described as thinking but which is very different from what a man does?

Alan Turing
Instruction tables will have to be made up by mathematicians with computing experience and perhaps a certain puzzle-solving ability. There need be no real danger of it ever becoming a drudge, for any processes that are quite mechanical may be turned over to the machine itself.

Alan Turing
We are not interested in the fact that the brain has the consistency of cold porridge.

Alan Turing
Suppose Mother wants Tommy to call at the cobbler's every morning on his way to school to see if her shoes are done, she can ask him afresh every morning. Alternatively she can stick up a notice once and for all in the hall which he will see when he leaves for school and which tells him to call for the shoes, and also to destroy the notice when he comes back if he has the shoes with him.

Alan Turing
In other words then, if a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.

Alan Turing
We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start with? Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English.

Alan Turing
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.

Alan Turing
If one wants to make a machine mimic the behaviour of the human computer in some complex operation one has to ask him how it is done, and then translate the answer into the form of an instruction table. Constructing instruction tables is usually described as "programming."

Alan Turing
Unless in communicating with it one says exactly what one means, trouble is bound to result.

Alan Turing
We do not wish to penalise the machine for its inability to shine in beauty competitions, nor to penalise a man for losing in a race against an aeroplane. The conditions of our game make these disabilities irrelevant.

Alan Turing
Presumably the child-brain is something like a note-book as one buys it from the stationer's. Rather little mechanism, and lots of blank sheets.

Alan Turing
A man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal machine.

Alan Turing
The view that machines cannot give rise to surprises is due, I believe, to a fallacy to which philosophers and mathematicians are particularly subject. This is the assumption that as soon as a fact is presented to a mind all consequences of that fact spring into the mind simultaneously with it. It is a very useful assumption under many circumstances, but one too easily forgets that it is false. A natural consequence of doing so is that one then assumes that there is no virtue in the mere working out of consequences from data and general principles.

Alan Turing
I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'

Alan Turing