Alan Turing

"The chemical basis of thought is not less real than that of digestion."

"It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence."

"I can see only one escape from the dangers of uncontrolled artificial intelligence."

"A machine can be interrogated in a normal manner without having to be examined by scientists."

"I expect that digital computers will eventually stimulate a considerable interest in symbolic logic."

"It will be practically impossible to discriminate the machine from the human being."

"The original question 'Can machines think?' I believe is too meaningless to deserve discussion."

"We do not need to programme a machine to learn these facts: they come from the environment."

"Instruction tables will have to be changed a very great number of times."

"No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company."

"The extent to which we regard something as behaving in an intelligent manner is determined as much by our own state of mind and training as by the properties of the object under view."

"One is left with the feeling that human mental peculiarities are quite strong, and that we shall needhave a very powerful machine to supply any particular service."

"I am convinced that machines can and will think."

"A program has several aspects that must not be overlooked, and it is only when they are all satisfied that we have a program."

"I would say that a very good first step is to realize that the idea of a machine thinking is not absurd."

"It may be that to construct a thinking machine is in itself a contradictory notion."

"The brain is a biological machine and it is reasonable to expect it to have finite capacity."

"Machinery which can behave like a machine and like a man, according to circumstances, would be much the most useful."

"Contrary to the views some people hold, there is no sort of mechanism in the world such as we can understand that would have any sort of effect."

"I have had a letter from Father O'Beirne asking me to come and stay with him next month. Perhaps he is hoping to convince me that Queen Victoria was one of his [ancestors]."

"God has not been proven not to exist, and he has not been proven to exist."

"I believe that nothing I could say would change my views on the fundamental matters at issue."

"The view that machine may think appears to me harmless and to not materially affected by fallacies in the philosophical arguments by which it is supported."

"We are not interested in the fact that the brain has the consistency of cold porridge."

"It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English."

"In short then, a digital computer, suitably programmed, could play a very reasonable game of chess."

"The idea that artificial intelligence is possible seems to be opposed to the idea that machines cannot think."

"I believe that by the end of the century it will be possible to speak of machines thinking without being contradicted."

"I am not very impressed by 'theological' arguments whatever they may be used to support."

"It is possible that the principle of heredity and of selection are sufficient to account for all the phenomena."