Language and communication in Turing’s machine intelligence

In this paper I will discuss Turing’s ideas about mechanical intelligence and suitable methods for simulating intelligent behavior in machines with special regard to his position after World War II. My main thesis is that Turing considered communication and interaction between human beings and machines a crucial asset for ensuring intelligent performances on the part of machines. Accordingly, Turing was also interested in Cybernetics research on information technologies and interactive communication. He attributed a remarkable value to language as a communication tool rather than simply a representational means, in contrast with the established thinking in classical logic researches, which were strictly intertwined with the debate on the foundations of mathematics. Alan Turing and John von Neumann were both fascinated by the Cybernetics relational approach to the study of adaptive and intelligent behavior, and were not inclined to focus exclusively on a computational approach in the search for machine intelligence. In this paper I will mainly focus on Alan Turing’s position. However, I will also examine some of the approaches proposed by von Neumann, emphasizing points of agreement between the two scientists on many research ideas and projects.