Robert McNees
Mathematician, computer scientist, and WWII code breaker Alan Turing, who established the theoretical foundation for just about every modern computing device, was born #OTD in 1912. His work helped make it possible for you to read this.
The British government prosecuted him for being gay, a monstrous act that eventually led to Turing’s death by suicide. Then they waited 50 years before issuing a pardon.
Image: The Guardian
Robert McNees
In 1936 Turing wrote "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem," in which he addresses Hilbert's decidability problem, proves that the Halting Problem is unsolvable, and lays out the modern definition of computability.
Ref: https://londmathsoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1112/plms/s2-42.1.230
Robert McNees
Given the proliferation of bots on social media, and of LLMs [sweeps arm in revealing gesture] basically everywhere else, Turing's paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" may be of more current interest.
In this paper he proposes the "imitation game" for scrutinizing a machine's ability to emulate human intelligence. We now call it the Turing Test.
Ref: https://academic.oup.com/mind/article/LIX/236/433/986238?login=false
Robert McNees
Really, the test proposes to gauge a machine's ability to emulate a human trying to *deceive* another human.
This is perhaps even more relevant to the current moment, to the ways LLMS and related technologies are impacting social media, spam and email solicitations, legal filings citing unusual case law, and a zillion other things. You may have heard some things recently!
Robert McNees
Turing initially describes the imitation game in terms of a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator.
The man and woman are in one room, the interrogator in another. The interrogator passes them questions and receives replies labeled "X" or "Y."
The interrogator's goal is to correctly assign "X is A and Y is B" or vice-versa. The man's goal is to trick the interrogator into making the wrong assignment. The woman's goal is to help the interrogator.
Robert McNees
The Turing Test is now usually phrased in terms of a person and a machine, with the machine trying to convince the interrogator that it is a person, and the person trying to help the interrogator make the correct identification.
In informal usage, the Turing Test has come to refer to a person trying to decide, on the basis of replies to conversational questions or some sort of test, whether or not they are speaking to a machine or another person.
Robert McNees
A few years ago I wrote about this on another social media site. When I used the word "assignment" it immediately triggered an avalanche of replies from multiple bots asking if I needed any help writing essays or completing assignments. Rates negotiable, results guaranteed to fool even the savviest human reader.
Robert McNees
In 1952, the British government prosecuted Turing for what it termed "gross indecency."
He was gay, which to them was a crime. To avoid prison he was forced to submit to chemical castration. A few years later he took his own life by ingesting cyanide.
Turing’s codebreaking work at Bletchley Park during WWII had been critical to the war effort and saved tens of thousands of lives, maybe more. The British government repaid him with demonization and persecution.
Robert McNees
To be clear, absolutely no one deserves this treatment. A person's right to live as themselves, free of persecution, isn't conditional on their contributions to war efforts or society or whatever.
Robert McNees
In December of 2013, 59 years after his death and 61 years after his chemical torture by the state, Alan Turing received a royal pardon for a something that should never have been a crime in the first place.
Robert McNees
Then, two years ago today, a government that hounded Alan Turing to his death and waited over a half-century to pardon him, began circulating bank notes bearing his image.
Image: The Guardian
T.S. Aguilar
@mcnees
They put Alan Turing on the £50 note to make sure that poor people never see his portrayal and wonder who this guy was and what he contributed.
oylenshpeegul
@mcnees I only recently learned that, on top of everything else, he also did important work in biology!
Frost
@mcnees If they taught me stuff like this in History class I'd have paid attention
David Honess
@mcnees for others reading this, there's an Easter egg on the note, there's a binary code on a line going into his shoulder, convert it to decimal 👍
Roger Crew✅❌☑🗸❎✖✓✔
Ob01000111100000111101111
= 0x23c1ef
= 2343407
= 11²×107×181
Trying it little-endian, I get
0x7bc1e2 = 8110562
(November 8, 562?)
It's not valid UTF8 in either direction (assuming adding a leading 0 to get it to 24 bits was what was intended but evidently not...)
okay, I'll bite; what's this supposed to be?
Roger Crew✅❌☑🗸❎✖✓✔
sure helps to find the version of the image that *doesn't* have somebody's thumb covering the first two bits (10)
Ob1001000111100000111101111
= 0x123c1ef
= 2343407 + 2^24
= 19120623
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/images/banknotes/50/polymer/polymer-50-specimen-back.jpg
rainynight65
@mcnees I am still incensed about the fact that he was merely pardoned, not exonerated.
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