System Architecture and Complexity

7Dynamics of Processes

Thanks to his famous article “On computable numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem”, then his involvement in deciphering the codes of the German army’s Enigma machine – (using an electromechanical machine: the Bombe) and his work focusing on the “other” Turing machine, the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) machine that is very similar to von Neumann’s work at the same time on the other side of the Atlantic – we know that A. Turing was interested in two problems:

1. 1) machines that were in the process of being invented, could we reasonably simulate certain behaviors typical of human intelligence such as the resolution of well-defined problems (deciphering of a message, game of chess, analysis of human language, etc.)? In other words, do we know how to record knowledge in machines in the form of logical facts: the sky is blue; snow is white; if I drop a stone, it falls according to the laws of falling bodies and gravitational forces , etc.? And do we know how to write about programs that can simulate human questioning? Designing machines that are capable of learning? Or those that will allow us, using requests and/or questions formulated by an operator, to deduce an acceptable answer using the recorded knowledge? Turing summarized this problem in an article published in the journal Mind, in 1950: “Computing machinery and intelligence”, the ...