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94 people, organisations and other records · 122 relationships · 34 claims about a valueEverything recorded up to the chosen year, whether or not still in effect · Undated records included
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Turing’s 1947 lecture says that letting a machine alter its own instructions supplies a mechanism for learning from experience, but that this alone is insufficient. Copy claim link
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Date 1947-02-20 · event Role Context Register (kind of text) Nonfiction Missing element Self-altering instructions enable learning, but no starting architecture aimed at redesigning its own intelligence is specified. Scope and limits Self-modification for learning, not a claim of recursive growth; Turing also warns against expecting the machine to build extensive instruction tables without human training.
The evidence 01 primary source Supports the claim
Lecture to the London Mathematical Society on 20 February 1947 (AMT/B/1) ↗ The Turing Digital Archive, King’s College, Cambridge · Publication date unknown
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Paraphrase Turing wants a machine that learns from experience. Allowing it to alter its own instructions supplies a mechanism, but that alone is not enough; Turing cautions against expecting it to build extensive instruction tables without human training.
Location in source Typescript p. 23 (scan 30), opening paragraph; p. 24 (scan 31)
Machine-checked · 2026-10-06
Source details and check notes Authors Alan M. Turing Version Annotated typescript photocopy, scans 30–31 (typescript pp. 23–24), inspected by the pre-1996 candidate search. Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-06 Language English (en) Attribution Alan M. Turing, lecture of 20 February 1947, Turing Digital Archive AMT/B/1, King’s College, Cambridge. Reuse No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata and labelled paraphrases only: archive scans are provided for research and their images are not reproduced. Phrases in quotation marks inside a paraphrase identify the source's wording. Check notes Paraphrase from the pre-1996 candidate search, whose scan inspection a later machine check retained. Not re-read for this collection. Status and meaning Editorial status. Not reviewed by an editor . An exploratory record that no editor has accepted. This status does not say whether a person has read any linked passage. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.
Relation. A passage of the document bears on the proposition without meeting its criterion; the record names the missing element. It is not an articulation and implies no influence.
Date. Lecture date in the King’s College catalogue. The typescript photocopy is undated, and the text was first printed in 1986; the date identifies the lecture.
Record ID ts-a2-turing-1947-context