It Began with Babbage (38 page)

Turing expended considerable space to countering anticipated objections to his proposal. He discussed these under a number of broad headings of which perhaps the most interesting were the following.
⁹²

Theological objection
: Thinking is a function of man's immortal soul. God has given an immortal soul to humans only, and not to animals or machines—hence, no animal or machine can think.

Mathematical objection
: Here, Turing referred to the implications of Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem (see
Chapter 4
, Section I)—that there are certain limits to the power of purely mechanical (or formal) systems and procedures, even computing machines. Thus, machines suffer from certain kinds of “disabilities” that humans (who are not mechanical or formal systems) are not prone to.

Argument from consciousness
: That machines cannot “feel” in the sense that humans feel emotions, in which case one cannot identify machines with humans.

In each of these cases, Turing advanced a response. For example, he was not “impressed” with the theological argument for various reasons, including its arbitrary separation of humans from animals, and the fact that this objection was Christianity based. Moreover, theological arguments in the past have been falsified by advances in (scientific) knowledge.

As for the mathematical objection, Turing pointed out that there may well be similar limitations to the human intellect. It has never been
proved
that the human intellect does not suffer from similar disabilities as do formal systems.

About the argument from consciousness, Turing speculates on a version of the imitation game involving just
I
and
C
in which
C
responds to
I
's questions or comments about a sonnet in such a fashion that leads an observer to conclude that
C
's response is convincingly humanlike.

Turing also addresses Lovelace's caution—that a programmable computing machine (in her case, the Analytical Engine) could not originate anything but, rather, it could do only what it was programmed to do (see
Chapter 2
, Section VIII). In response, Turing quoted David Hartree (whom we encountered in
Chapter 8
, Section XI) who, in his book
Calculating Instruments and Machines
(1949), considered the possibility of a computer as
learning
from its past “experiences.”
⁹³
Suppose, Turing writes, the existence of a real, contemporary computer with such learning capacity. Because the Analytical Engine of Lovelace's time was a general-purpose (“universal”) computing machine, this, too, could be programmed to “mimic” the learning machine.
⁹⁴

Another version of Lovelace's warning could be that machines “never take us by surprise.” But this, Turing argued, was an empirical question. Machines, he said, frequently take him by surprise, because he—like others—is himself constrained in his capacity to reason, calculate, make decisions, and so on. He pointed out that philosophers and mathematicians alike are prone to the fallacy that as soon as a fact is presented to someone all the consequences of the fact are revealed immediately.
⁹⁵
If this were so, then perhaps the fact that a computer is programmed to do something means that one would know all
that the computer produces by executing the program, and there would, indeed, be no surprises. But that presumption is quite false.

  
1
. R. Tagore. (1912).
Gitanjali
(
Song Offerings
) (poem 35). London: The India Society. This collection of poems, which won Tagore the Nobel Prize the year after their publication, has been republished or anthologized many times. See, for example, A. Chakravarty. (Ed.). (1961).
A Tagore reader
(pp. 294–307). Boston, MA: Beacon Press. The poem from which the lines are taken here appears on p. 300.

  
2
. N. Wiener. (1961).
Cybernetics: Or control and communication in the animal and the machine
(2nd ed., p. 2). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (original work published 1948).

  
3
. Ibid.

  
4
. K. J. W. Craik. (1967).
The nature of explanation
(p. 52). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (original work published 1943).

  
5
. Ibid., p. 60.

  
6
. Ibid., p. 58.

  
7
. M. V. Wilkes. (1985).
Memoirs of a computer pioneer
(p. 23). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  
8
. Ibid.

  
9
. J. Bruner. (1990).
Acts of meaning
. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

10
. M. A. Boden. (2006).
Mind as machine: A history of cognitive science
(Vol. 1, pp. 216–217). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

11
. W. S. McCulloch & W. Pitts. (1943). A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity.
Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, 5
, 115–133. Reprinted in J. A. Anderson & E. Rosenfield. (Eds.). (1988).
Neurocomputing
(pp. 18–27). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. All citations here refer to the reprinted version.

12
. Ibid., p. 19.

13
. Ibid.

14
. J. von Neumann. (1945).
First draft of a report on the EDVAC
(p. 4). Unpublished report. Philadelphia, PA: Moore School of Electrical Engineering.

15
. Ibid., p. 5.

16
. Ibid.

17
. Ibid., p. 9.

18
. Ibid.

19
. Ibid., pp. 10–17.

20
. L. A. Jeffress. (Ed.). (1951).
Cerebral mechanisms in behavior: The Hixon Symposium
. New York: Wiley.

21
. J. von Neumann. (1951). The general and logical theory of automata. In Jeffress, op cit., pp. 1–41. Reprinted in A. H. Taub. (Ed.). (1961–1963).
John von Neumann: Collected works
(Vol. 5, pp. 288–326). Oxford: Clarendon Press. All citations refer to the reprinted article.

22
. Ibid., p. 289.

23
. Ibid.

24
. Ibid., pp. 289–290.

25
. Ibid., p. 290.

26
. Ibid.

27
. Ibid., p. 297.

28
. Ibid.

29
. Ibid.

30
. Ibid. pp. 297–298.

31
. Ibid.

32
. Ibid., p. 298.

33
. Ibid.

34
. Ibid., p. 300.

35
. Ibid., p. 298.

36
. Ibid., p. 300.

37
. Ibid.

38
. Ibid., p. 309.

39
. Ibid., p. 314.

40
. Ibid., p. 315.

41
. I have borrowed these terms from J. R. Sampson. (1976).
Adaptive information processing
(p. 58). New York: Springer-Verlag.

42
. von Neumann, op cit., p. 317.

43
. J. von Neumann. (1966).
Theory of self-reproducing automata
. In A. W. Burks (Ed.), Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press; E. F. Codd. (1968).
Cellular automata
. New York: Academic Press; A. W. Burks. (Ed.). (1970).
Essays on cellular automata
. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

44
. G. G. Langdon, Jr. (1974).
Logic design: A review of theory and practice
. New York: Academic Press.

45
. C. E. Shannon. (1948). A mathematical theory of communication.
Bell Systems Technical Journal, 27
, 379–423, 623–656. Also available online:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948
.pdf

46
. C. E. Shannon & W. Weaver. (1949).
The mathematical theory of communication
. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

47
. See, for example, C. Cherry. (1968).
On human communication
. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

48
. Shannon, op cit., p. 379. So far as is known, this article was the first to introduce the term
bit
in the published literature.

49
. Cherry, op cit., pp. 41–52.

50
. C. E. Shannon. (1950a). Programming a computer for playing chess.
Philosophical Magazine, 41
, 256–275. Also available online:
http://archive.computerhistory.org
/projects/chess/related_materials/text/2-0%. Citations to this article refer to the online edition, which is not paginated. This quote is from p. 1.

51
. Ibid.

52
. Ibid.

53
. In February 1950, before Shannon's article in
Philosophical Magazine
appeared, a more popular and briefer article by Shannon was published in an American science periodical: C. E. Shannon. (1950b). A chess-playing machine.
Scientific American, 182
, 48–51.

54
. Shannon, 1950a, op cit., p. 2.

55
. J. von Neumann & O. Morgernstern. (1944).
Theory of games and economic behavior
. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

56
. Shannon, 1950a, op cit., p. 3.

57
. See, for example, A. Barr & E. A. Feigenbaum. (Eds.). (1981).
The handbook of artificial intelligence
(Vol. I, pp. 26–27). Stanford, CA: HeurisTech Press.

58
. A. D. De Groot. (2008).
Thought and choice in chess
. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. The original 1946 edition was in Dutch.

59
. Shannon, 1950a, op cit., p. 4.

60
. Ibid., p. 4.

61
. Ibid., p. 5.

62
. Ibid., pp. 6–7.

63
. Barr & Feigenbaum, op cit., pp. 84–85. See also E. Charniak & D. McDermott. (1985).
Introduction to artificial intelligence
(pp. 281–290). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

64
. Shannon, 1950a, op cit., p. 9.

65
. Ibid., p. 1.

66
. Ibid.

67
. W. Weaver. (1949).
Translation
. Memorandum. New York: The Rockefeller Foundation. Also available online:
http://www.mt_archive.info/weaver-1949.pdf

68
. Anon. (1998). Milestones in machine translation, no.2: Warren Weaver's memorandum 1949.
Language Today, 6
, 22–23; Y. Bar-Hillel. (1960). The present status of automatic translation of languages. In F. L. Alt (Ed.),
Advances in computers
(Vol. I, pp. 91–163). New York: Academic Press.

69
. G. Steiner. (1975).
After Babel: Aspects of language and translation
. Oxford: Oxford University Press; S. Chaudhuri. (1999).
Translation and understanding
. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

70
. Weaver, op cit., p. 6.

71
. Ibid.

72
. Ibid.

73
. Ibid., p. 10.

74
. Ibid.

75
. Ibid., p. 2.

76
. Ibid.

77
. Ibid.

78
. Ibid., p. 11.

79
. J. H. Greenberg. (Ed.). (1963).
Universals of language
. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

80
. Weaver, op cit., p. 12.

81
. Wilkes, op cit., p. 195.

82
. Ibid., pp. 195–197.

83
. E. C. Berkeley. (1949).
Giant brains, or machines that think
. New York: Wiley.

84
. A. M. Turing. (1945).
Proposal for the development of an electronic computer
. Unpublished report. Teddington: National Physical Laboratory. Printed in D. C. Ince. (Ed.). (1992).
Collected works of A.M. Turing
. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

85
. A. M. Turing. (1948).
Intelligent machinery
. Unpublished report. Teddington: National Physical Laboratory. Printed in B. Meltzer & D. Michie. (Eds.). (1970).
Machine intelligence 5
(pp. 3–23). New York: Halsted Press.

86
. A. M. Turing. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence.
Mind, LIX
, 433–460. Reprinted in M. Boden. (Ed.). (1990).
Philosophy of artificial intelligence
(pp. 40–66). Oxford: Oxford University Press. All citations refer to the reprinted article.

87
. Ibid., p. 48.

88
. Ibid., p. 49.

89
. Ibid.

90
. K. R. Popper. (1968).
Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge
. New York: Harper & Row.

91
. Turing, op cit., p. 49.

92
. Ibid., pp. 49–55.

93
. D. R. Hartree. (1949).
Calculating instruments and machines
. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

94
. Turing, op cit., p. 56.

95
. Ibid., p. 57.

IN FEBRUARY
1951, the Ferranti Mark I was delivered to the University of Manchester. This was the commercial “edition” of the Manchester Mark I (see
Chapter 8
, Section XIII), the product of a collaboration between town and gown, the former being the Manchester firm of Ferranti Limited.
¹
It became (by a few months) the world's first commercially available digital computer
²
(followed in June 1951 by the “Universal Automatic Computer” [UNIVAC], developed by the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation
³
).

The Ferranti Mark I was unveiled formally at an inaugural conference held in Manchester, June 9 to 12, 1951. At this conference, Maurice Wilkes delivered a lecture titled “The Best Way to Design an Automatic Calculating Machine.”
⁴
This conference is probably (perhaps unfairly) more known because of Wilkes's lecture than for its primary focus, the Ferranti Mark I. For during this lecture, Wilkes announced a new approach to the design of a computer's control unit called
microprogramming
, which would be massively consequential in the later evolution of computers.