Bruce Sterling talks about Alan Turing | Hacker News Reader

Bruce Sterling talks about Alan Turing

wired.com

30 pointsmtraven7 comments

Would Turing be so well remembered if he was a German Nazi code breaking expert? This thought experiment is a good answer to those claiming his AI and Logic work is of over-arching importance and who, by comparison, seek to downplay his major contribution to winning the war.

This is an uncomfortable topic, as it immediately brings into mind the 'reward' he got.

Turing's real tragedy was that he thought he helped 'freedom' to win and thus felt justified to enjoy it in his personal life and be open and truthful about it. Doing otherwise would show up the slogans of 'fighting for freedom' to be utterly empty.

I don't see this as a primarily gay issue but a bigger one of society based on following the letter of the law at any cost - never mind justice, motivation, and yes, ad-hominem considerations. Could as well be administered by a computer. Much easier success than with the Turing test!

"...Then somebody articulates a gesture, they feed something in there, some impulse, some data set… They tweak it, they see what directions it’s going to go… They modulate the parameters, they move the switches, pull-down menus and the slider bars… They look for some optimum setting where they seem to get the best results with the fewest ugly screw-ups. They may come across some lucky accidents. Then they wrap that up and ship it, whether that’s a skyscraper or an mp3 track."

This bit has set me thinking about how most things start with an interaction with software now...

"[...] we should be devoting some thought to a suicidal Artificial Intelligence. Nobody does this, [...]"

Somebody did, at least in passing. I remember an SF story where AIs were only useable for about six months - they'd go catatonic afterwards.

Memory fails me about details, not even the writer's name.

And how about https://sites.google.com/site/asenselessconversation.

Stanislaw Lem has written some brilliant stories (and book reviews of fictional books) about artificial intelligence going off the deep end:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem_XIV

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Lem%27s_fictitious_cr...

"So let’s just suppose that Alan Turing is just the same personally: he’s a mathematician, an early computer scientist, a metaphysician, a war hero — but he’s German."

When the name von Braun is said, slave labor may come in mind for some, but for most they think rockets.

If Turing was German, everything would have been much the same: he would have won the war, been awarded an iron cross, and then been castrated for being gay.

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