
Bruce Sterling talks about Alan Turing - mtraven
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2012/06/turing-centenary-speech-new-aesthetic/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wiredbeyond+%28Blog+-+Beyond+the+Beyond%2FSterling%29
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SagelyGuru
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!

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keithpeter
"...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...

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ableal
_"[...] 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.

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SimHacker
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...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Lem%27s_fictitious_criticism_of_nonexisting_books)

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steauengeglase
"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.

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SagelyGuru
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.

