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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 talk of about 1951 says that once machine thinking had started it would soon outstrip human powers, and that at some stage we should have to expect the machines to take control, as mentioned in Butler’s Erewhon. Copy claim link
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Machine-checked, not reviewed by an editor Stated in source Supported
Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source
Date 1951 · event Role Articulation Register (kind of text) Nonfiction Scope of the passage Control half: machines eventually take control. Scope and limits A prediction of loss of control, with no mechanism of concealment. The reference to Erewhon is the talk’s own citation, not evidence of influence. The machines’ sharpening of their wits by conversation does not meet the A1 criterion.
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
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Source excerpt “At some stage therefore we should have to expect the machines to take control, in the way that is mentioned in Samuel Butler's 'Erewhon'.” Location in source Concluding paragraph: typescript p. 10 (AMT/B/4/16, scan 16); carbon p. 101 (AMT/B/4/6, scan 6)
Machine-checked · 2026-10-06
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) 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 Read on the typescript page image (p. 10) for this collection and compared with the carbon (p. 101), which has the same sentence with irregular spacing. The scan has no text layer. 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 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 in the King’s College catalogue (c. 1951); no exact lecture day or contemporary printing is established.
Record ID ts-b6-turing-c1951