---
title: "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"
authors:
  - "Alan M. Turing"
year: 1950
venue: "Mind"
arxiv: null
doi: "10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433"
source: "https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433"
topics:
  - ai
  - turing-test
  - intelligence
  - turing
seed_rank: 519
seed_batch: "foundations-greats-2026-08-13"
reviewed: "2026-08-13"
pool: "agents"
relevance_score: 10
lineage: foundations-of-computing
cites:
  - title: "Intelligent Machinery"
    url: "https://www.npl.co.uk/getattachment/about-us/History/Famous-faces/Alan-Turing/80916595-Intelligent-Machinery.pdf?lang=en-GB"
    year: 1948
    arxiv: null
    doi: null
  - title: "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity"
    url: "https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02478259"
    year: 1943
    arxiv: null
    doi: "10.1007/BF02478259"
  - title: "The Logic Theory Machine: A Complex Information Processing System"
    url: "https://doi.org/10.1109/TIT.1956.1056797"
    year: 1956
    arxiv: null
    doi: "10.1109/TIT.1956.1056797"
  - title: "Programming a Computer for Playing Chess"
    url: "https://doi.org/10.1080/14786445008521796"
    year: 1950
    arxiv: null
    doi: "10.1080/14786445008521796"
see:
  - "520-intelligent-machinery"
  - "565-a-logical-calculus-of-the-ideas-immanent-in-nervous-activity"
  - "580-the-logic-theory-machine-a-complex-information-processing-sy"
  - "381-programming-a-computer-for-playing-chess"
---

# Computing Machinery and Intelligence

## One-sentence takeaway

Turing replaces "Can machines think?" with the Imitation Game: an interrogator who cannot reliably tell the machine from the woman has no remaining operational question.

## Why it matters here

Charter document for the agents pool. GRID COMMAND's NL orders and Broadside's agent loop inherit the same move: stop arguing about inner light and measure whether the system can hold the conversation (or the standing rule) under adversarial questioning.

## Key ideas

- The Imitation Game isolates verbal performance from embodiment and from the interrogator's prejudices.
- Replies, in turn, to theological, "heads in the sand," mathematical, consciousness, Lovelace, and extrasensory objections.
- Sketches learning machines and child-machines as the practical path, not a giant lookup table.
- Ties the stored-program digital computer of the ACE/EDVAC era to the possibility of intelligence as an empirical engineering claim.

## Caveats

## Links

- DOI: [10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433](https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433)
- URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433