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Turing’s talk ‘Intelligent Machinery, a Heretical Theory’ (c. 1951) sets out to question the commonplace ‘You cannot make a machine to think for you’, and says it seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. Copy claim link
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Machine-checked Stated in source Supported
Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source; Context: primary · 1 source
Date 1951 · event Records dated 1951 → Role Articulation Register (kind of text) Nonfiction Scope and limits The record rests on the talk’s stated purpose of questioning that a machine cannot be made to think, read with its expectation of a ‘machine thinking method’; the contention on p. 2 is worded as simulation and is kept as context.
The evidence 03 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 "You cannot make a machine to think for you". This is a commonplace that is usually accepted without question. It will be the purpose of this paper to question it.” Location in source Typescript p. 1 (AMT/B/4/7, scan 7), opening
How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher
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. primary source Context only
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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Cite the original source Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.
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Source excerpt “My contention is that machines can be constructed which will simulate the behaviour of the human mind very closely.” Location in source Typescript p. 2 (AMT/B/4/8, scan 8), last 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 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. Context: worded as simulation, which U02’s criterion alone does not count. No human editorial review. 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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Cite the original source Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.
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Source excerpt “once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers.” Location in source Typescript p. 10 (AMT/B/4/16, scan 16)
How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher
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. The dataset paraphrases this sentence for its A1 and A4 context records. 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-u02-turing-c1951