Alan Turing life and work
Birth, childhood and adolescence
Alan Turing was born in London on June 23, 1912. His father, Julius Mathinson Turing worked in India in the body of British officials of that country, which made Alan pass most of his childhood there.
From an early age, his interest in numbers, reading and puzzles were expressed. He entered the ST school. Michael at age six, where his genius was discovered. At 8 years, design a chemistry laboratory in his own home, which reiterated not only his aptitude for science but also his position of nonconformity with the educational system. At 15 he joined Albert Einstein’s work, understanding from his knowledge to his criticism.
Within his positions there was his lack of belief in the religion that broke out in 1930 when his great friend and according to some rumors, his first love, Christopher Morcom died from bovine tuberculosis. His atheist position led him to study the functioning of consciousness with which he argued that all phenomena and in particular the functioning of the human brain correspond to materialistic behavior.
His study methods and disagreement with the educational system led him to study the University of Cambridge instead of Trinity that was his first option. At the end of his university career he began his work in the logic to. Church of Princeton University in the United States. One of his greatest influences were from Godfrey Harold Hardy’s lessons. In 1935, he was appointed King’s College professor at the same university.
Contribution to modern computer science
In 1936 Alan proposed a computer capable of solving problems of any kind as long as it can be expressed in mathematical terms under operations in binary numbers that represent true or false responses.
It was sought to reduce from figures to sounds in binary language to use steps for problem solving. This idea arises as a counterpart to the “on computable numbers, with an application to the entscheidungsproblem” by David Hilbert, German mathematician. At that time then the concept of Turing machine arises which replaces the traditional language of Gödel.
Turing machine
The Turing machine was born as the reformulation of the limits of demonstrability and computing raised by Gödel. Operates under mathematical formulas from:
A symbols tape contained in cells of a finite alphabet that can be read and written by herself, one at a time.
A head capable of reading and writing these symbols by movement from left to right.
A list of instructions and operations such as writing or deleting a symbol, moving the head, assuming a new or the same state.
A record that keeps the state of the machine.
The machine solved all kinds of problem if it was represented as algorithm and that it would be able to perform all the tasks that another machine would perform. To this day, it is still the protagonist in the study of computing theory.
Pump
In addition to the machine, Turing has been remembered in history for his important participation in World War II when he managed to decipher the coded messages of the Nazis.
He led the team that worked with the Enigma machine, through calculations and equations he collaborated with the development of devices for cryptographic analysis creating the electromechanical machine pumps in response to the assumption that to fight the enigma machine it was necessary to use another machine. Its function was to undo the encryption under a search engine that worked at high speeds.
Pumps in addition to being a weapon that gave a solution to the war, it was presented as the axis that began artificial intelligence.
The story says that Turing’s cryptographic studies and the development of Bombe (which was only known until the 70s) shortened the duration of the war around 2 years.
This triumph led him to think about many computational processes that could learn from experience as a human being would. Starts the programming of machines capable of answering questions and situations.
Subsequently, it established computational tools that were able to maintain a conversation with people, with the possibility of having sensitivity and particular characteristics of humans. From this then what would be the most important proof of current computer sciences would be.
Turing test
In 1950, he created an experiment that establishes the level of "intelligence" of a machine. The experiment arises as an imitation game composed of an interrogator, a man and a woman.
A curtain is located in the middle of a room, which to the people of the interrogator who establishes a series of questions to discover the gñero of who is behind the curtain. The main assumption of the experiment is that women’s responses will be sincere while men’s can be in doubt;To guarantee anonymity, a computer is used to transmit the responses to the interrogator. The game is won, when the person manages to deceive the interrogator.
However, this only explains the behavior of the human mind, so the real challenge of the Turing test is to pass a machine as a human.
For the second version of the game, the same stage is created but this time, the answers come from a machine. The interrogator launches the same series of questions to establish who is behind the curtain, if the machine manages to believe that it is a human, it is considered that the machine passed the test.
Given the evolution of the computational processes, today the test is not performed in a room with a curtain, however, the Turing test is the most important and transcendental test of a machine still today, which is whyHe has a conversation with a person through a chat, if he manages to convince the person that he is talking with another, the machine will have overcome the test.
The success and positioning of any machine and device that intends to establish operation in the world of artificial intelligence depends on the approval of this test.
End of your life and recognition
In 1952, while making a complaint for a robbery at home, he confessed to the authorities his homosexuality, which ended in a judgment that would persecute him until his death. He underwent a chemical castration treatment with estrogen injections since his condition was a moral attack.
Two years later, in 1954, he died of cyanide poisoning whose official version argued to have eaten an poisoned apple with said chemist (since he found himself on the table next to his death bed) that he could have created, which labeled the fact the factLike a suicide. However, the apple was never studied under this assumption, so there were various theories in which the murder, or accidental death due to nasal cyanide intake while doing an experiment in his house was included.
Turing did not obtain recognition in life, therefore, since 1966 his colleagues establish an award that is equivalent to the Nobel Information Technology and now call Turing Award.
Also, at the end of the 20th and early twenty -first century, the recognition of Turing takes the place it deserves in the British government. In 2009 Minister Gordon Brown apologized publicly by the treatment Turing received during his life. In 2013, Queen Elizabeth granted posthumous forgive.
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