Assignment 1 for Spring 2025, some reading

• Read this: Can machines think? Computing Machinery and Intelligence, by A. M. Turing
  • It is split into 7 numbered sections. Do not bother with sections 3, 4, or 5, they are really just trying to say what a computer is, you don't need that.
  • Don't be fooled by sub-sections numbered (1), (2), etc., the sections you can ignore do not have parentheses around their numbers.
  • When he mentions "valves", he is talking about what you would call vacuum tubes, the predecessors of transistors.
  • The phrase "viva voce" means "in live voice", it refers to D.Phil or Ph.D. examinations at Oxford or Cambridge.
  • By "scientific induction", he means (trying to) discover general rules from a number of specific observations.
  • If he seems to be getting a little bit racist at some point, just remember that this was written in 1950, people had very different sensibilities back then.
• There will be an in-class quiz. I am not telling you what the questions will be, but these are key things to notice and understand how they fit in:
  • His thoughts on extra sensory perception
  • The "undistributed middle" in section 6(8)
  • His mention of the constitution of the United States.
  • Ada Lovelace's objection that a machine can only do what we tell it to do.
  • His mention of Gödel's (Incompleteness) Theorem, what is his point there?
• You will not be expected to get everything perfectly right, there is opinion involved after all.
• But you will need to demonstrate that you read the paper AND thought about it.
• In this case it is not cheating to look up terms on the internet.
• Also remember that ChatGPT can be a complete idiot.