Thinking Machines

Alan was sweating. Something was missing. Something important. Even though he had been sitting for the past three hours, his muscles ached from the tension in his body. His cramped apartment was dimly lit and sparsely furnished, apart from the prominent bookshelf stuffed with abstruse mathematical tomes and a desk sprawled with reams of scribbled notes which were under interrogation from Alan's intense gaze. 

"Bloody hell," he muttered under his breadth as he flipped through papers with inscrutible mathematical symbols scribbled over them like ancient hieroglyphs. Despite the apparent lack of organization, Alan maintained a perfect mental model of the exact contents of his desk. His college papers, including his proof of the central limit theorem of which he was quite proud, were in a manila folder at the foot of his table. Most of his declassified notes from his time in military intelligence were stowed in an overflowing drawer at his right hip, save for those currently wallpapering the surface of his desk. He was consulting them for his latest and most ambitious project — which was nowhere to be found.

His latest project was the most ambitious in a long line of already impressive work. Although his contributions in the military was the most applicable and probably had saved millions of lives, Alan's heart beckoned to earlier days when he was a graduate student at Princeton. He fondly remembered those summer strolls amongst the ivy-coated towers with his advisor Alonzo, with whom he had a fruitful collaboration. Their work on problems in logic and the foundations of mathematics produced stunning results. Although they shocked the world with their computability theorem, it was just the first step in Alan's vision. 

"Bollocks," Alan swore as he clutched his hand. As he went to search the bookshelf for his missing notes, a heavy tome came crashing down on him. He glanced down at the cover and let out a small chuckle. He picked it up with a smirk. "Mechanical Intelligence. Was I always this pithy?" he asked himself, reading the title of the book. It was a collection of his post-war papers on so-called "thinking machines". Although the war had strained resources and forced him into an intellectual box, so to speak, the post-war economic boom allowed him to pursue his wildest ideas. 

Thinking machines! From nothing more than a scribble in his notebook, he delicately and deliberately formulated the theoretical framework for machines that could automate tedious computation. The immediately obvious motivation was to automate trivial work, such as arithmetic on large numbers or algebraic calculations with known algorithms. Important, but Alan's vision was more ambitious than making a calculator. 

Alan tossed the book on the ground. He scanned his finger across titles in probability, cryptography, and logic, looking for his missing manuscript. It was fruitless — the title wasn't there. 

He grew more and more agitated. The missing manuscript was his magnum opus, the manifesto of his vision, developed over 30 years in absolute secrecy. It was his final work, but the manuscript was just the beginning of humanity's next thousand years of invention. After publishing this manuscript, humanity would not, could not, ever be the same — for Alan's vision was the final stage of humanity's evolution. Alan's vision was for humans to be nothing less than Creators of Life. 

"Found it!" He grabbed the loosely bound pages from where they laid on the ground. He had just polished out the final draft on his typewriter last night. Alan took a shaky breath as he flipped to the cover and read the title — Computing Machinery and Intelligence. If he published this, then humanity itself would never be the same. Alan's manuscript outlined humanity's last invention — not just a simple calculator, but a true thinking machine. 

Computing Machinery and Intelligence was Alan's framework for building artificial intelligence. These thinking machines, unlike his old calculating computers, would be indistinguishable from human beings. Alan thought back to when he brought the idea up in passing to his advisor Alonzo. Alan remembered his colleague had remarked, "If your thinking machines are indistinguishable from human beings, then who is to say that I am a human and not a thinking machine? Would you have any way of knowing?" 

In the moment, they had shared a chuckle — but the thought had stuck with Alan. What was the future that his work would build? He knew his work had great potential — humans as Gods, building mechanical intelligence to take care of their every whim. No more work, no more suffering. Humanity could look to the stars and let their imaginations run wild. But if his thinking machines would be indistinguishable from humans, would they not be humans? Would creating thinking machines to do work be a new form of slavery? Would history remember him as a monster — creating a new form of life who were born to be subjugated? 

Alan stood quietly. These doubts had been creeping in his mind the past decade, but he pushed them aside and concentrated on the technical details. Now that his work was complete, he couldn't hide any longer. Alan knew his work was too powerful — after all, it would be humans that would see his work to completion. The same humans that discovered atomic energy and used it to make devastating bombs. The same humans that he fought against in the war, who exterminated millions of people, including 6 million Jewish civilians. The same humans that denounced his sexuality, arrested him for "gross indecency" and forced him to undergo hormone therapy. 

Alan knew he could not publish his work. Publishing this would be turning barbaric apes into gods. The inner turmoil, which had been bubbling for years, was now boiling over. He quietly struck a match, lit his manuscript, and sat down by the windowsill to eat an apple. The apple was so sweet he couldn't even taste the cyanide. As it coarsed through his system, shutting down vital organs, he wondered how the world would remember his name — Alan Turing.