Alan Turing — "Instead of trying to produce a programme to simulate the adult mind, why not rat…"

Instead of trying to produce a programme to simulate the adult mind, why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child's? If this were then subjected to an appropriate course of education one would obtain the adult brain.
Alan Turing — Alan Turing Modern · Computer science, codebreaking

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

Details

From "Computing Machinery and Intelligence".

Date: 1950

Educational

Verification

Unverifiable

Found in 1 providers: gemini

1 source checked

Understanding this quote

What it means

Rather than building AI that mimics a fully formed adult intellect from scratch, start with a simpler system capable of learning, then train it. Intelligence is not hardwired but developed through experience. This reframes the AI problem as one of education and growth rather than direct programming of complex knowledge.

Relevance to Alan Turing

Turing pioneered computational thinking and the foundational question of machine intelligence. His 1950 paper introduced the Turing Test. This quote reveals his intuition that learning, not static programming, was the path forward — a vision predating machine learning by decades, rooted in his deep curiosity about how minds actually work.

The era

Written around 1950, when computers were room-sized and strictly deterministic. The idea that a machine could learn rather than merely execute fixed instructions was radical. Behaviorism dominated psychology, emphasizing conditioning and learned responses — Turing absorbed this and applied it to machines, anticipating neural networks and modern AI training paradigms by seventy years.

AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].

Your Cart

Your cart is empty