The view that machines cannot give rise to surprises is due, I believe, to a fallacy to which philosophers and mathematicians are particularly subject. This is the assumption that as soon as a fact is presented to a mind all consequences of that fact spring into the mind simultaneously with it. It is a very useful assumption under many circumstances, but one too easily forgets that it is false.
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From his paper 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence', published in the journal Mind.
Date: 1950
PhilosophicalFound in 1 providers: gemini
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Turing challenges a widespread logical error: the assumption that understanding a fact means instantly grasping all its implications. Minds, human or machine, don't automatically derive every consequence the moment they receive information—working out implications requires actual effort and time. Because of this fallacy, people wrongly conclude machines cannot surprise us. Since deduction isn't instantaneous even for humans, machines working through logic can produce genuinely unexpected, novel results.
Turing published this in his landmark 1950 paper 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence,' which introduced the Turing Test. As designer of the Bombe machine that cracked Nazi Enigma codes—producing war-changing outputs its operators hadn't anticipated—he knew machines generated genuine surprises. His theoretical work on computability showed that even simple rule-following systems produce outputs unpredictable without actually running them, grounding this observation in concrete mathematical and engineering experience.
In 1950, the first programmable computers—Manchester Mark 1, ENIAC—had just become operational, and society had no framework for thinking about machine intelligence. Cold War pressures were accelerating computing research while philosophers still debated whether calculation could constitute thought. Turing's paper arrived precisely when these questions shifted from abstract philosophy to urgent engineering reality, making his defense of machine surprise foundational for the emerging field of artificial intelligence.
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