Computers and Craniums: A Continuing Cycle of Connections
The enigma of the human mind is a puzzle that has fascinated many great scientists. From the earliest musings of the ancient philosophers to the advanced neuroscience research going on today, many intelligent people have worked to understand what is going on in our own heads. In an interesting phenomenon, our understanding of the mind is intimately linked to the technology that is used to study it, and the new findings that arise feed directly back into the development of new tools. As scientific equipment has become capable of better observing the brain and human behavior, the mind has come to be understood more as an incredibly complex machine than as an incomprehensible mass residing …show more content…
Turing first describes an “imitation game” that he believes would be a good test for artificial intelligence,6 then attempts to argue against the attacks that skeptics level on his artificial intelligence theories. He later admits that he “has no very convincing arguments of a positive nature to support my views,”7 as technology has not yet caught up with the concepts that he proposes. Turing 's work, published less than a decade before the creation of Gateways to the Mind, is clearly influenced by the same level of understanding of the mind that is manifest in the film. His counterarguments (as well as the arguments that he is responding to) represent the human mind in a machine-like way, much as Gateways to the Mind represents the sensory systems as a well-defined series of processes. However, Turing takes this mechanical understanding of the human mind and attempts to reverse it. He argues that if the human mind is machine-like, it is certainly possible for a mind-like machine to be created, even if it has to be a discrete approximation of the human mind, which is a continuous system.8 Turing 's contentions demonstrate the complex interplay between the understanding of the mind and the development of technology. Through his arguments about how and why it is possible to create an artificial intelligence, he takes what is currently known about computers and the mind, then proceeds to synthesize the knowledge of the mind into theories about new computing technology. This in turn has inspired new technologies, and even today there are researchers attempting to simulate the human
The enigma of the human mind is a puzzle that has fascinated many great scientists. From the earliest musings of the ancient philosophers to the advanced neuroscience research going on today, many intelligent people have worked to understand what is going on in our own heads. In an interesting phenomenon, our understanding of the mind is intimately linked to the technology that is used to study it, and the new findings that arise feed directly back into the development of new tools. As scientific equipment has become capable of better observing the brain and human behavior, the mind has come to be understood more as an incredibly complex machine than as an incomprehensible mass residing …show more content…
Turing first describes an “imitation game” that he believes would be a good test for artificial intelligence,6 then attempts to argue against the attacks that skeptics level on his artificial intelligence theories. He later admits that he “has no very convincing arguments of a positive nature to support my views,”7 as technology has not yet caught up with the concepts that he proposes. Turing 's work, published less than a decade before the creation of Gateways to the Mind, is clearly influenced by the same level of understanding of the mind that is manifest in the film. His counterarguments (as well as the arguments that he is responding to) represent the human mind in a machine-like way, much as Gateways to the Mind represents the sensory systems as a well-defined series of processes. However, Turing takes this mechanical understanding of the human mind and attempts to reverse it. He argues that if the human mind is machine-like, it is certainly possible for a mind-like machine to be created, even if it has to be a discrete approximation of the human mind, which is a continuous system.8 Turing 's contentions demonstrate the complex interplay between the understanding of the mind and the development of technology. Through his arguments about how and why it is possible to create an artificial intelligence, he takes what is currently known about computers and the mind, then proceeds to synthesize the knowledge of the mind into theories about new computing technology. This in turn has inspired new technologies, and even today there are researchers attempting to simulate the human