Drama of the English genius
Does any of the respected readers plan to visit the famous British Lodz, i.e. Manchester? in the world are known mainly thanks to football players? let him try to see Sackville Park there. There is a very interesting monument there; interesting for two reasons. Firstly, because of its form, eagerly taken up by many cities of the world, which endowed themselves with characteristic benches with a bronze figure sitting on them in memory of their great ones; this is how they look like the famous statue of Julian Tuwim and? student monument on the university campus in Warsaw. Secondly ? for a man honored in Manchester; undoubtedly one of the greatest scientists in world history, whose fate is also extremely dramatic and ended tragically. Such an end is a disgrace to the civilized? presumably? peace; all the more striking that it dates from the mid-twentieth century.
The person in question Alan Mathison Turing, one of the fathers of theoretical computer science, a brilliant mathematician and a great cryptologist who made a huge contribution to the victory of the Allies in World War II by breaking the extremely complex codes of the Nazi troops and transmitting the most secret German telegrams to British commanders.
First discoveries
Alan was born June 23, 1912; so we'll be there soon? probably with a lot of hype? celebrated the centenary of his birth. His father, Julius, was an Indian civil servant; he and his wife Ethel lived permanently near Madras in South India. However, as the parents wanted the child to be born in England, they left India and Alan was born in London. Alan's father immediately returned to India, and his mother left fifteen months later, in mid-September 1913, leaving Alan in the care of nannies. Therefore, the child was brought up without contact with parents, which was not uncommon in some social spheres of that time.
In 1926, Alan Turing entered an official school; only fourteen years old. From the very beginning he showed excellent mathematical abilities, but at the school, which was intended to educate the future leadership of the British Empire, he felt bad. Maybe because it was during this period that he discovered his homosexual orientation and, unfortunately, fell in love with a friend? Christopher Morcom, who died shortly thereafter of tuberculosis (February 13, 1930). After his death, Turing worked even harder, and in 1931, at the age of 19, he was awarded a research fellowship at King's College, Cambridge.
Here he wrote his absolutely brilliant mathematical dissertation, i.e. He introduced completely unknown concepts into mathematics. It was in this dissertation that he defined an abstract machine capable of executing a programmed algorithm, today called a Turing machine. The machine could only execute one particular algorithm; for example, she could square a number, divide two numbers, add, subtract. The numbers had to be entered into the machine with paper tape.
Then the young scientist developed a universal Turing machine, which? depending on the instructions written on the tape? had to perform some operation. It was, in fact, the most general scheme of computer operation known to us today, far from specific technical solutions, but very general.
Here it is worth giving a very interesting mathematical and logical conclusion that follows from Turing's reasoning. A little earlier, the great Austrian scientist Kurt Gödel introduced the concept of an undecidable sentence into mathematics. This is such a formally constructed sentence that cannot be proven or refuted in any way on the basis of the system of axioms adopted in the theory under consideration. Moreover, if this sentence is added to the theory as another axiom, then another equally embarrassing undecidable sentence will immediately appear in it. This is a statement of extremely deep philosophical content, pointing to the limits of human knowledge, or at least outrageously limiting the possibilities of describing reality with the help of axioms and logical deduction, rightfully considered one of the greatest mathematical discoveries of the XNUMXth century.
And from Turing's considerations follows a completely different proof of this theorem than the one given by Gödel. Alan's wording? of course, the equivalent Austrian wording? he decides that it is not (very generally and not very strictly speaking) possible to solve all possible computational problems with the help of even the most universal mathematical machine; otherwise ? that there are well-formulated algorithms that simply cannot be executed by any machine.
But also this? still epic? the achievement does not exhaust the contents of Turing's dissertation. He also considered the possibility of building a computer according to the old plans of Charles Babbage and proved that the ideas of this nineteenth century scientist and designer are quite real.
In short: the 26-year-old mathematician with this work forever entered the history of mathematics and computer science. Soon he was appreciated and accepted by the scientific community, which treated him with great respect. However, his sexual preferences remained a mystery, which some time later led to the tragedy mentioned at the beginning.
Cryptanalytics
Hard times soon followed. War broke out. Machines designed by famous Polish cryptologists that cracked the codes of the famous German cipher machine known as the Enigma made their way to England. British experts had no doubt that the Nazis would improve their apparatus, and decided to anticipate them. In 1939 Turing was offered a job as a cryptanalyst (codebreaker) at Bletchley by the State School of Codes and Cyphers.
Have I ever written about this strange, mysterious city where the then British intellectual elite was concentrated? linguists and culturologists, mathematicians and engineers. At its peak, this decryption center employed about 10 people. people ? and it is worth noting that the British counterintelligence managed to disguise all this so that not a single bomb or rocket fell on Bletchley during the entire war! Is this the first real one in Bletchley? Computers of the Colossus series. The role of this city and center? and the existence of these computers? became public only a quarter of a century after the end of hostilities.
Turing improved the Polish apparatus at Bletchley and designed the so-called bombs? devices for cracking Nazi codes. Such? Bombs? first 15? and they all worked with great success, supplying the generals with invaluable news.
It was like that for two years. In 1941, Commander Edward Travis, a rather straightforward (as it turned out) military man, became the head of the center. which the ? not understanding the severity of the problem? blocked access of cryptanalysts to the funds. Turing did not give up: he went directly to Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself. Not disappointed? the great politician appreciated the great mathematician and ordered further funding for the work. A year later Bletchley not only had forty-nine "bombs" but a new cryptanalysis station was built at Gayhurst Manor.
At this point Bletchley's recruitment was publicly announced. Is there anything to mention today? after all, recruiting is okay? if not for its highly original form. Namely, without explanation, what was it about in the Daily Telegraph? Complicated as hell? crossword. The six readers who answered it correctly were invited to a special test organized by the British intelligence services (MI6); after passing it, they joined Turing's team at Bletchley.
After the war
After the war, Alan Turing designed one of the first British "Civilian" aircraft. computers. He also published (1950) the assumptions of the so-called Turing test defining artificial intelligence; a test used and recognized to this day as reliable to answer an intriguing question about the intelligence of machines. To find out more about him? Let's just take a look at Wikipedia, which says the following:
The test is: judge? human ? conducts a conversation in natural language with other participants. If the judge cannot reliably determine whether either side is a machine or a person, the machine is deemed to have passed the test. Both human and machine are supposed to try to pass the test by behaving as close to human behavior as possible.
The test is based on a game of guessing the gender of someone in another room through a series of questions and answers written on a piece of paper. In Turing's original idea, the person had to pretend to be the opposite sex, and the test was limited to a five-minute conversation. These functions are not considered basic today and are not usually included in the Turing test specification.
Turing expected that machines would eventually be able to pass this test. He calculated that about 2000 machines with 10^9 bits of memory (approximately 119 MB) could fool 30% of the judges in a five-minute test. He also predicted that people would stop considering the phrase "Thinking machine?". how contradictory. He believed that machine learning would become very important in building efficient machines. Is this statement considered justified by today's artificial intelligence researchers?
And further:
• So far, no computer has passed the Turing test. Simple conversation programs like ELIZA could make people believe they were talking to a real person. An example is an informal experiment called AOLiza. However, such? successes? it's not the same as taking the Turing test. First, a person in such a conversation has no reason to suspect that he is not talking to another person. In a real Turing test, the interrogator tries to actively determine the nature of the interlocutor. The documented cases mostly take place in an IRC environment where the conversations are highly stilted and there are often nonsensical comments that indicate a misunderstanding of the topic. In addition, many chat participants speak English as a second or third language, which only increases the likelihood that they will consider a stupid chat program comment to be something they simply did not understand. They are also unfamiliar with most bot technologies and do not recognize the typical non-human errors made by such programs.
In September 2011, the Cleverbot program, created by Rollo Carpenter in 1988 and developed since then, fooled more than 59,3% of its audience into believing it was a human. 4% missed the Turing test because 63,3% correctly recognized the person in the same job.
Two years of nightmare
In 1952, the drama that led to Turing's death began. Someone broke into his house; the scientist reported this to the police. An investigation began, during which, to a direct question, Turing had to admit that he was gay.
The law in force at the time in England considered this a "violation of public morals", that is, a crime. The scientist was put on trial; In the course of the trial, when passing a guilty verdict, the court gave the accused a choice: deprivation of liberty or voluntary undergoing hormone therapy under the supervision of a psychiatrist, i.e. the so-called "chemical castration". Turing opted for the latter and began taking massive doses of estrogen with unpleasant side effects.
However, this was not the worst, although we consider this decision of the court to be inherently unlawful, highly reprehensible and even unimaginable.
The fatal thing about this verdict was that it was delivered at all. The mere conviction of Turing, regardless of the punishment applied, automatically deprived him of access to classified information. This meant taking him out of computer research, and the result? professional death.
The scientist maintained this situation for another two years. On June 7, 1954, he locked himself in his bedroom and committed suicide. At the age of 41, one of the greatest geniuses of mankind passed away, a man about whom it was said that without him the war would have lasted many months longer, thousands of people who made their country immense would have died in vain. He died persecuted for the basest ideological reasons by monstrous stupidity. It is rightly considered one of the most disgusting episodes in the history of modern civilization.
In 1999, the magazine "Time? named Turing one of the 10 most influential people of 2009. In XNUMX, then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly apologized to the public on behalf of his government for the "complete injustice". and?terrible? Turing therapy.
So what?
