Insights from Alan Turing – Father of artificial intelligence

Alan Turing (1912-1954) – a pioneering mathematician who also known as the father of computing and artificial intelligence; and was granted a Royal pardon by the Queen because of his contribution as a code-breaker in World War Two.  One of the most famous Alan Turing’s related topics would be “Can machine thinks?”

Just a head up in advance, I am not going to share about who Alan Turing is or how Alan Turing breaks the Enigma ciphers or how the Turning machine works and the following in this post is somehow not Alan Turing related at all.  The topic I would like to discuss a bit here is about the topic that just mentioned in the last paragraph on whether a machine thinks and, to certain extent, “Can an analytics platform thinks?”    

Many people would ask whether Data Analytics believable which I have mentioned earlier in my old post.  My first question is would people think or consider of getting “something” to help in decision making no matter you believe or not believe that “something” would or would not give you a reasonable, thinkable and questionable suggestion produced by acceptable analyzing or thinking process? 

A data analytics platform normally works with various statistical mathematical modelling derived and programmed by the data experts and then produce advices accordingly.  Question is shall we consider this advice generating process as “machine thinking”? 

One idea is that data experts have in fact only programmed the rules into the machine’s memory and then the machine would work itself to produce the results once we request the machine to “think” by pressing the start button. As such, shall we consider what the data experts did as teaching rather than running the machines? Alan Turing predicted that “machine learning” would play an important role of building powerful machines which might teach which I would consider that every one of us who work in IT field are in fact teaching the machine in some circumstances.

However, on the other hand, the machine might only produce the pre-programmed advisory options but not anything out of the box, then is it still consider as “thinking”?  But in fact, are we all, as a human, also just producing our personal thoughts based on what our peers, such as teachers, friends or own experiences, teach us or pre-programmed in our brain?

“Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.”

-          Alan Turing

“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.”

-          Alan Turing

I would leave all the above questions open for discussion and I would hope to see what would happen in the rest of my life.  However, it is no doubt for me that I believed Data Analytics is one of the most possible ways to create a better world tomorrow.  For example from what I am doing in my job, leveraging Big Data to fight against Money Laundering activities.