Claim · 1951 · event · Stated in source · Supported

Turing’s broadcast script ‘Can Digital Computers Think?’ (1951) states his belief that digital computers could be used in such a manner that they could appropriately be described as brains.

One recorded claim. The claim panel gives its qualification, the source passages with their place in each source, and how it was checked.

What it connects

Can Digital Computers Think? → articulates → A machine could think

Where it appears

Antecedent texts: machine intelligence before 1965 →

Claim and evidence

Can Digital Computers Think?articulates ↓A machine could think

Machine-checkedStated in sourceSupported

Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source

Date: 1951 · event Records dated 1951 →
Role: Articulation
Register (kind of text): Nonfiction

Scope and limitsThe script’s opening states the view Turing holds himself, ‘that it is not altogether unreasonable to describe digital computers as brains’; its title asks whether they can think.

The evidence 01

primary sourceSupports the claim

Can Digital Computers Think? (AMT/B/5)

The Turing Digital Archive, King’s College, Cambridge · Publication date unknown

Archived copy, captured 2025-07-14: Can Digital Computers Think? (AMT/B/5)

Cite the original source

Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.

Source excerpt

“In fact I believe that they could be used in such a manner that they could appropriately be described as brains.”

Location in source Script p. 2 (scan 2), second paragraph

How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher

Machine-checked · 2026-11-04

Source details and check notes

Authors: Alan M. Turing
Version: Annotated broadcast script; p. 6a (AMT/B/5/7, scan 7) read on the page image for this collection.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-06
Language: English (en)
Archive copy: Open archived copy, captured 2025-07-14: Can Digital Computers Think? (AMT/B/5). No publication date is recorded for this source. An archive copy shows only what the archive retrieved on 2025-07-14. 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, "Can Digital Computers Think?", BBC broadcast script, Turing Digital Archive AMT/B/5, 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 page images (script pp. 1–2, scans 1–2) on 2026-11-02, including handwritten corrections. 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. The King’s College catalogue identifies the annotated script (AMT/B/5) with the BBC Third Programme broadcast of 15 May 1951; the script’s composition and annotations are not dated to that day, and it is not a recording of what was said.

Record ID pre-u02-turing-1951