Alan Turing — "We are not interested in the fact that a machine can solve a problem, but in the…"
We are not interested in the fact that a machine can solve a problem, but in the fact that it can solve a problem that we cannot.
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More from Alan Turing
"The human mind is capable of doing many things that a machine cannot, but a machine can do many things that a human cannot."
"The machine will eventually be able to do anything that a human can do."
"The only way to do great work is to love what you do."
"The value of a result is not measured by the time it took to get it."
"We are building a brain."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
The true measure of a machine's value isn't that it can do what humans do, but that it can accomplish what lies beyond human capability entirely. A machine that merely replicates human effort offers limited advancement; one that transcends human cognitive limits represents a genuine leap forward in what is achievable by intelligence itself.
Relevance to Alan Turing
Turing spent his career pushing computation into territory human minds couldn't reach alone. At Bletchley Park, Bombe machines cracked Enigma ciphers at speeds no cryptanalyst could match. His theoretical work on computability asked precisely what problems machines could solve that formal human reasoning could not, making this sentiment central to his life's purpose.
The era
In the 1940s and 1950s, early computers were often dismissed as glorified calculators. Turing wrote against this skepticism, arguing machines could exceed human cognitive boundaries. Post-WWII, the codebreaking achievements demonstrated concretely that machines weren't just fast humans but tools capable of solving previously intractable problems, reshaping what civilization considered possible.
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