Alan Turing — "The future of computing is in artificial intelligence."
The future of computing is in artificial 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
"I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past. In the time of Galileo it was argued that the …"
"A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human."
"The question whether machines can think is as meaningless as the question whether submarines can swim."
"The power of machines will one day be so great that they will be able to do anything we can do, and more."
"I have had a very happy life. I have done many things that I wanted to do."
Details
Attributed, general implication from his pioneering work, but exact quote is elusive.
Date: Approx. 1950s
ShockingVerification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: grok
1 source checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
Machines are more than fast calculators — their real destiny is to think. This claim argues that computing's true frontier isn't faster arithmetic or larger storage, but intelligence itself: the capacity to reason, learn, and adapt. The lasting value of computers won't come from executing fixed instructions but from systems that can tackle open-ended problems the way human minds do.
Relevance to Alan Turing
Turing founded the theoretical basis for AI. His 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" introduced the Turing Test, asking whether machines can truly think. At Bletchley Park he built the Bombe to crack Nazi Enigma codes — proving machines could solve problems once thought to require human judgment. AI wasn't peripheral to his work; it was his defining intellectual preoccupation and career culmination.
The era
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the first stored-program computers — ENIAC, Manchester Baby, EDVAC — were just emerging. Cold War pressures accelerated computing investment, but most scientists saw machines as giant arithmetic engines. Turing was writing at this inflection point, when calling a machine "intelligent" was a radical and contested idea. His vision reframed what computers were ultimately built for.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].