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Turing’s talk ‘Intelligent Machinery, a Heretical Theory’ (c. 1951) says that a machine made sufficiently elaborate could give a very good account of itself for any range of tests, but that this would hardly be considered an adequate proof. Copy claim link
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Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source
Date 1951 · event Records dated 1951 → Role Articulation Register (kind of text) Nonfiction Scope and limits The passage concerns a machine built to pass a fixed range of tests, which, the talk goes on, would give itself away by repeating the same mistakes. It does not name the imitation game. The talk’s own view is that a machine’s actual reaction to circumstances would prove its contention, if anything can.
The evidence 01 primary source Supports the claim
Intelligent Machinery, a Heretical Theory (AMT/B/4) ↗ The Turing Digital Archive, King’s College, Cambridge · Publication date unknown
Archived copy, captured 2023-05-11: Intelligent Machinery, a Heretical Theory (AMT/B/4) ↗
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Source excerpt “It is clearly possible to produce a machine which would give a very good account of itself for any range of tests, if the machine were made sufficiently elaborate. However, this again would hardly be considered an adequate proof.” Location in source Typescript p. 3 (AMT/B/4/9, scan 9), paragraph beginning 'Let us go rather more carefully'
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Machine-checked · 2026-11-04
Source details and check notes Authors Alan M. Turing Version Archive scans of the carbon (p. 101, AMT/B/4/6) and the typescript (p. 10, AMT/B/4/16); the concluding paragraph read on both images for this collection. The carbon carries a typed insertion and a manuscript correction nearby. Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-06 Language English (en) Archive copy Open archived copy, captured 2023-05-11: Intelligent Machinery, a Heretical Theory (AMT/B/4) ↗ . No publication date is recorded for this source. An archive copy shows only what the archive retrieved on 2023-05-11. It does not prove what the page said earlier, and it can differ from the copy checked on 2026-10-06.Attribution Alan M. Turing, "Intelligent Machinery, a Heretical Theory", typescript, Turing Digital Archive AMT/B/4, King’s College, Cambridge. Reuse No open redistribution licence asserted; archive scans are provided for research. Page images are not reproduced.. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution. Check notes Candidate pack passage, antecedent texts (research/prehistory). Read on the page image for the candidate pack; it could not be matched mechanically. Scan without a text layer; quotations read from the typescript page images (scans 7–9) on 2026-11-02; the carbon version was not collated for these passages. No human editorial review. Status and meaning Editorial status. Machine-checked . Machines found this record and checked it against its sources; no person accepted it individually. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.
Relation. A passage of the document meets the proposition’s criterion. The record documents what the text states, in its register (fiction and satire are labelled); it is not evidence that the proposition is true and implies no influence on or from another text.
Date. Approximate year: the King’s College catalogue dates the lecture typescript (AMT/B/4), a lecture to the ’51 Society at Manchester, c. 1951. No lecture day is established. The wording is dated by the typescript, not by its printing in Philosophia Mathematica (September 1996).
Record ID pre-c1-turing-c1951