[Ultima (OP)]

http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Turing.html

I wouldn't be at university if it wasn't for this dude []. The father of all modern computing, and artificial intelligence. Invented computers (although others built the machines and brought them to realisation such as Tommy Flowers & the Colossus) and software/maths to crack the Enigma code in WWII. However his amazing work, career and life were all cut short thanks to the short sighted views of homosexuality at that time in the UK... which lead to Turing killing himself with a cyanide laden apple [V].

wOw the world spins?

[DoctorBeaver]

I think you'll find that psychologists were discussing AI long before Turing came along. And they, in their turn, were probably following in the footsteps of the ancient Greek philosophers.

It wasn't me - a big boy did it & ran away

[Ultima (OP)]

Psychologists!!! Perhaps I should have said applied A.I. technology I’m not talking philosophy or thought experiments []. If he had lived longer he might have accomplished even greater things, as he started to delve into looking at biology more and more. With the influence of the discovery of DNA which was discovered a year before Turing’s death, he might have been inspired to develop far more sophisticated, self organising, chaotic computers that would certainly be of value now. This is no leap of faith in his supposed ability, as he implied that he was looking and close to finding something “new” to get beyond the limitations of his universal machine. Stored program computers to this day work in pretty much the exact same way as how Turing envisioned only with greater parallelism, we are still looking for something new.

LOL Eth just saw your profile, PhD in Psychology, BSc in Computer Science stop trying to hog all the cool stuff [] you get to deal with “real” intelligence and biological hardware. But you are right many people in A.I. have backgrounds in both Psychology and Computing. They often take different stand points though; Computer Scientists are motivated to build intelligence into machines to make them more useful, whilst Psychologists try to use machines as a metaphor to explain how human intelligence arises. You notice this from reading A.I. texts some concentrate on the philosophy and principles, whilst others the mathematics and implementations.

I'm interested in both views, especially artificial life which is a nice combo of the two. It must have been fun to have done degrees in both subjects...

wOw the world spins?

[DoctorBeaver]

Matt - I got into psychology as a result of studying AI in my comp sci course. While I was working in IT I did an MBA through the Open University to further my career. I started working my way up through the management ranks & ended up dealing more with people than with machines. I became really fascinated by personality types & began wondering whether that was something that could be mirrored by machines. I started reading books on personality & psychology & got hooked. When I began my psychology course it was my intention to delve further into AI but I got somewhat side-tracked into the dependence/addiction bit [)]
Incicentally, I've got friends in Aberystwyth (Penparcau - I think that's how one spells it) so I may bump into you some day.

[David Sparkman]

Turing basicly described computer languages before there were such things. Yes computing machines existed for some time, but they had not been abstracted to languages yet. His contribution included branching logic, but was tied to the one step at a time which was surpassed with the 486 chip and the introduction of "guessing" in the hardware. I.e. before the computer knows the answer from the previous branching instruction, it begins working on the next step assuming the most probable branch.

The scary part is that with computers designing computers, and with the number of circuits in modern cpu's we are fast approaching the point, if not already there, where we cannot fully test a chip, either for design flaws or for instructional failure. There are just too many combinations...

I also found a piece of code installed by MicroSoft that suggests that  MS can change the microcode in the CPU at their whim. If you want to see a virus that will kill a computer cold, let me make a change to the microcode. We are not talking about "mostly dead"... It's send your CPU back in to Intel for reprogramming. How Cute of Billy Boy to make us vulnerable to yet another attack.

David