Alan Turing's lost radio broadcast rerecorded

On the 15th of May 1951 the BBC broadcasted a short lecture on the radio by the mathematician Alan Turing.

His lecture was titled “Can Digital Computers Think?” and was part of a series of lectures which featured other leading figures in computing at the time.

Unfortunately, these recording no longer exist, along with all other recordings of Alan Turing. The following is a rerecording of Alan Turing’s lost broadcast from his original script.

Photo: Alan Turing (right) at the console of Mark II computer, c. 1951, at the University of Manchester.

[MrAlFuture]

It is so sad how Turing was treated. Humanity lost a wonderful mind far too early.

[IceMetalPunk]

So in this lecture from 1951, Alan Turing predicts various aspects of machine learning algorithms, including the necessity of PRNGs, and even touches upon the uncanny valley.

He really was extremely insightful, wasn't he? I only wish he'd have survived longer to continue his work.

[Great.Milenko]

in this one speech he predicted general AI, and the machine learning which will develop it...

dude was so far ahead of his time, if he were around today he would be amazed

[JamesWoolley]

I misread the title of this video and initially thought an audio recording of Turing had been found. I don’t know why but I have always been very curious on how Alan Turing sounded. Apparently he had a higher than average pitch voice and a slight stutter.

[gedece]

Fantastic clarity and insights from one of the great minds, a mind so precious, and we killed it just because of seuality.

[moanilsson]

My maths teacher would be so proud if she knew that I listen to this on my summer break

[Agirmetal]

He was a genius and a WW2 hero. Too bad how his life ended. Rip

[CircusBamse]

I agree with what many of you say about him, but I also really like the way he presents his ideas humbly and says there are plenty of room for other opinions!

[Sam_on_YouTube]

Such pure brilliance. Turing is highly rated and yet still so under rated.

[dragoncurveenthusiast]

A truly remarkable man ahead of his time.
It's so sad we lost him that young.

[daggawagga]

It's just fascinating how most of the parts of this lecture could easily be mistaken as someone talking about these subjects today, especially machine learning.
Except for the *"I certainly hope and believe that no great efforts will be put into making machines with the most distinctively human but non-intellectual characteristics such as the shape of a human body"* part. Sex bots is where the money's at, isn't it? 😂

Thanks a lot for taking the time to provide and sync the subtitles. This helps a lot for those of us still learning spoken English. Maybe this will help the machines at some point, too?
Edit: and thanks for this gift of a video!
Merry Xmas!

[Biped]

One always tends to think of people in the past as kind of narrow minded, I think. "They couldn't have imagined those things 30 years ago" and "nobody 40 years ago would have believed this could one day exist..." but those people, especially him, didn't said "never" and that's what I find astonishing.

[babarali]

Alan Turing is my hero because he save many lives .

[_varden]

I'm barely four minutes in and I'm just astonished. Turing was so far ahead of his time.

[FeelingItNow]

i actually thought this was the youtuber's actual thoughts on the recording, and that he would play the real recording afterwards. its amazing how he talked about computers the way a man talks about it 70 ish years later

[dijpdepijp]

Beautiful broadcast. The longer I think about it, the smaller the differences between man and machine seem to be. Funny how far ahead of his time Turing was.

[krystofdayne]

Holy shit, it's been a long time since your last video, completely forgot I was even subscribed to you xD

[dougmcnally]

It's eerie how prescient Turing was about so much. He got so many things exactly right that it makes me give serious credence to his idea that computers will eventually be able to faithfully imitate a brain.

[xponen]

Wow, Alan Turing is soo smart, he had a philosophical answer for one important AI questions that I think is still relevant today. For example he succinctly describe how an AI could originate ideas without the programmers actually knowing the answer; first he do this by acknowledging that the programmers doesn't necessarily know what's he is doing, in which case the programmer created an algorithm that imitate a brain and set it into motion but he doesn't know how it will end with what answer, then the AI output an idea that is predictable in mechanical sense but not predictable to the programmer himself, in which case the AI demonstrated a free will. Philosophical answer like this is very important to us because it answered a fundamental questions such as the AI without actually knowing esoteric knowledge on such matter, in this case he couldn't possibly know the basic AI tree-searching algorithm that form all AI in 60s, this algorithm can easily create answer that escape the programmer's grasp, so he is making an argument that yielded correct answer decades later without actually knowing the actual answer is impressive!

[mellamobob]

"Our computers might not have enough RAM to simulate the human brain, but it probably has enough speed. If we just combine a couple hundred computers together, we might be in business!"
.... 66 years later ....