Alan Turing

Defined computation formally and framed the question of machine intelligence.

Biography

A British mathematician and logician whose 1936 paper gave a precise mathematical model of computation and proved the existence of undecidable problems. His 1950 article in Mind proposed replacing the question of whether machines can think with an operational behavioural test.

Key contributions

• The Turing machine, and the proof that some problems admit no general algorithmic solution.
• The universal machine, the theoretical basis of the general-purpose stored-program computer.
• The imitation game, now called the Turing Test, as an operational criterion for machine intelligence.

Impact

Russell and Norvig note that the 1950 article also anticipated machine learning, genetic algorithms, and reinforcement learning, and proposed teaching a machine as one teaches a child rather than programming adult competence directly.