[Tyler]

British Goverment Passes the Turing Test?
     


Anyone with even a passing interesting in AI or robotics knows who Alan Turing is.
Sometimes referred to as the "father of AI, Turing was interested in the
question of "intelligent machinery" as early 1941. he
helped secure an allied victory in World War II with his cryptanalysis
of the German Enigma. But among roboticists, he's known for his work
on the halting
problem, the Turing machine,
the Church-Turing
thesis, the Turing Test, the Automatic
Computing Engine, not to mention the Turing Award, which
is named in his honor. Equally well known, are is his persecution,
legal prosecution, and forced chemical castration by the British
government, whose treatment of him is believed to
have lead directly to his suicide in 1954. While too late to help
Turing, there is
good news from the UK, where
British prime minister Gordon Brown has officially apologized:
Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for
Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While
Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the
clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased
to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what
happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were
convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated
terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

The
apology was the result of a petition with over
30,000 signers started by British free software programmer John Graham-Cumming.
If you'd like to help preserve Turing's memory, how
about a contribution
to Bletchley Park Trust? CC-licensed Photo of slate Alan
Turing sculpture at Bletchley Park by flickr user blinkenlichts
   

http://robots.net/article/2917.html