Alan Touring, Steve Jobs, artificial intelligence and an apple.
Learn about stories and characters who have been able to give value to the world, paying a high personal price, always requires a focus of gratitude. The person is Alan Turing, now considered the father of Artificial Intelligence for his studies on computation and thanks to his idea of building a “universal machine,” proposing in 1949 an experiment that became famous as the ” Turing Test.” The experiment was designed to assess whether a computer could mimic human behavior.
It is the story of the great mathematician, logician, cryptographer and philosopher Alan Touring who, during World War II, succeeded in saving millions of people by being able to decode the code by which Adolf Hitler gave orders: the “Enigma” Code.
Alan Turing was born in London in 1912 and became one of the best mathematicians and cryptographers in history. He was the first to have applied the concept of algorithm to computers. He began his career as a mathematician at King’s College at Cambridge University in 1931. He was not very successful in school. His tendency was to delve exclusively into things that seriously interested him, without using a good study method.
It was through the great friendship he established with Christopher Morcom, a young man apparently much more promising in his studies, that he began his college career. He was spurred to believe strongly in his own possibilities and abilities by his friend who, unfortunately, died of tuberculosis two years after they met.
But the mark it left on Turing’s soul was profound and significant, causing him to find within himself the determination needed to continue his studies. Turing transferred to Princeton and began to explore what would later be defined as the “Turing Machine.“. A primitive “prototype” of the modern computer.
Turing’s brilliant insight was to “break” the instruction to be given to the machine into a series of other simple instructions. This was in the belief that an algorithm could be developed for every problem. A very similar process from that faced by today’s programmers. During World War II, he put his mathematical knowledge at the service of the British Communication Dept. to try to crack the codes used in German communications through an electromechanical device for encrypting and deciphering messages called ” Enigma.” A daunting task when we consider that the Germans had invented it to generate a constantly changing communication code.
Turing and his comrades produced “Colossus” which deciphered German codes so much faster and more efficiently that The contribution was crucial to the final victory for the Allies, bringing progress a step closer to the creation of the digital computer. With the war over, Turing concentrated on studying relational behaviors between computers and nature. In 1950 he made public his research regarding the very real possibility that machines could be created that could simulate the patterns of human brain processes, stating: ” if a machine can “fool” a human being into thinking it is another human being, then it can be considered “intelligent.”
The concept of ” artificial intelligence“.
His personal life was very troubled because of his homosexuality, which was still criminally prosecuted in the United Kingdom. Turing was betrayed and turned over to the authorities by one of his colleagues, and having to choose between prison and the chemical solution, he chose the latter. After only a year of taking estrogen he suffered severe depression with the resulting physical change. That was the moment when the scientist decided to inject cyanide into a apple and make Snow White’s curse real, stepping out of the life that had exploited him, offended him, and condemned him to an agonizing death.
One bite and on June 7, 1954, at only 42 years old, Alan Turing died.
Today Alan Touring is remembered and celebrated, but a story unites The Mathematician with our present. The ‘juxtaposition of the bite of the apple cannot help but make us think of Steve Jobs. The conception of the Apple symbol with the bitten apple, could be the personal tribute of a brilliant mind to another genius, whom unfortunately the banality of evil wanted to destroy, despite the millions of lives saved in war. To Alan Turing and to all of us, let him who contributed to victory through intellect be an example. An example to the whole world of how science and technology can be instruments of peace and hope in times of conflict. An apple to symbolize greatness, rebirth and capability. Steve Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson has always explained that the bitten apple logo, representing the Apple brand, is the result of chance, but it is also said that Steve Jobs was a great admirer of the genius of Alan Turing.
