Alan Turing — "I am not concerned with whether a machine has feelings, but whether it can perfo…"
I am not concerned with whether a machine has feelings, but whether it can perform tasks that require intelligence.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Alan Turing
"The human mind is a pattern-matching machine."
"The true nature of intelligence is not to be found in the ability to solve problems, but in the ability to ask the right questions."
"I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicte…"
"The question is not whether machines can think, but whether they can be made to think like humans."
"The machine should be able to carry out logical deductions."
Details
Attributed, general implication from his writings, but exact quote is elusive.
Date: Approx. 1950
ShockingVerification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: grok
1 source checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
Intelligence isn't about inner experience or emotion — it's about what you can actually do. The quote argues for judging minds by observable performance, not unknowable internal states. If a machine solves problems, reasons through complexity, and produces intelligent outputs, it qualifies as intelligent regardless of whether anything feels like something inside it. This is behavioral functionalism: capability, not consciousness, defines intelligence.
Relevance to Alan Turing
Turing formalized this exact idea in his 1950 paper 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence,' introducing the Imitation Game — now called the Turing Test — which evaluates machine intelligence through conversation, not introspection. A mathematician and codebreaker who cracked Nazi Enigma through logical rigor, Turing valued testable definitions over philosophical speculation. Tragically prosecuted for his sexuality, he knew firsthand how inner experience was dismissed; capability was the only fair measure.
The era
In the late 1940s and 1950s, the first electronic computers — ENIAC, Manchester Mark 1 — were just emerging, and society had no framework for thinking about machine minds. Philosophy was dominated by Cartesian dualism separating mind from matter. Turing's era witnessed the birth of cybernetics and information theory. His pragmatic stance cut through metaphysical fog at the exact moment humanity needed a workable definition of intelligence to guide the computing revolution.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].