From http://flickr.com/photos/treacletart/

Last week I mentioned that computers had come very close to pass the Turing Test. Before I explain why this year’s Loebner Prize contest was so significant and why next year’s is likely to be even more so, let me give some history on Turing and his test. In the field of Computer Science, Alan Turing is known by several different names, including the “father of modern computing” and the “father of artificial intelligence”. That alone should be enough for most people to understand that he’s a pretty important guy. What a lot of people don’t know about him, is that he broke the Germans’ Enigma machines during World War II, allowing the Allies to listen in on German communications. This breakthrough in using machines to decipher codes played a very important role in the Allies’ victory. Another thing that most people don’t know is that Alan Turing was gay. He was a gay man living in England during a time when being gay was illegal. Despite being a hero who had just saved his country, the government forced him to take estrogen as a way to combat his homosexuality, a standard treatment at the time that is now rather mystifying. In 1954, Turing killed himself by eating an apple soaked in cyanide (as you might guess, Snow White was one of his favorite movies.) So a brilliant man’s life was cut tragically short at a mere 41 years. During his life, though, he gave much to the fields of cryptology, computing, and artificial intelligence. I want to focus on that last one today. Read More >>