A machine that can learn from experience
20 February 1947 (London Mathematical Society). Alan Turing, then at the National Physical Laboratory, lecturing on the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) to the London Mathematical Society in February 1947, while discussing instruction tables that could let the ACE play chess.
Lecture to the London Mathematical Society on 20 February 1947
More from Alan Turing · AI and science · Before ChatGPT
Who else?
What it refers to: A machine that alters its own instruction tables as it runs, set against chess instruction tables that would only let the ACE beat an average player.
Other voices
- “A computer can be programmed so that it will learn” Arthur L. Samuel,
- “The machine will not learn by mistakes” Claude Shannon,
- “The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate any thing” Ada Lovelace, Researcher,
- “Programs that learn from their experience as effectively as humans do” John McCarthy,
- “Large language models are about mimicking people” Richard Sutton, Researcher,
- “Machines that learn to represent the world” Yann LeCun, Researcher,










