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The original question, 'Can machines think?' I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion.

Alan Turing

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Alan Turing
Age: 41 †
Born: 1912
Born: June 23
Died: 1954
Died: June 7
Artificial Intelligence Researcher
Computer Scientist
Cryptographer
Logician
Marathon Runner
Mathematician
Statistician
University Teacher
Warrington Lodge Medical and Surgery Home for Ladies
Alan M. Turing
Alan Mathieson Turing
Turing
Alan Mathison Turing
Think
Meaningless
Thinking
Discussion
Originals
Original
Machines
Deserve
Question
Believe

More quotes by Alan Turing

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No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.
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Programming is a skill best acquired by practice and example rather than from books.
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Up to a point, it is better to just let the snags [bugs] be there than to spend such time in design that there are none.
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A man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal machine.
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If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.
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Codes are a puzzle. A game, just like any other game.
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We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields.
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No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain.
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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.
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When we want to sink a convoy, we send out an observation plane first... Of course, to observe is not its real duty, we already know exactly where the convoy is. Its real duty is to be observed...Then, when we come round and sink them, the Germans will not find it suspicious.
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I'm afraid that the following syllogism may be used by some in the future. Turing believes machines think Turing lies with men Therefore machines do not think Yours in distress, Alan
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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.
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Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.
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These disturbing phenomena [Extra Sensory Perception] seem to deny all our scientific ideas. How we should like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming.
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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.
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In attempting to construct such (artificially intelligent) machines we should not be irreverently usurping His (God's) power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children,” Turing had advised. “Rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.
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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.
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A very large part of space-time must be investigated, if reliable results are to be obtained.
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Mathematical reasoning may be regarded.
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My little computer said such a funny thing this morning.
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