Alan Turing's Automatic Computing Engine: The Master Codebreaker's Struggle to build the Modern Computer

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1 University Press Scholarship Online You are looking at 1-10 of 26 items for: keywords : artificial life Alan Turing's Automatic Computing Engine: The Master Codebreaker's Struggle to build the Modern Computer B. Jack Copeland (ed.) Published in print: 2005 Published Online: January 2008 ISBN: eisbn: Item type: book acprof:oso/ The mathematical genius Alan Turing ( ) was one of the greatest scientists and thinkers of the 20th century. Now well known for his crucial wartime role in breaking the ENIGMA code, he was the first to conceive of the fundamental principle of the modern computer the idea of controlling a computing machine's operations by means of coded instructions, stored in the machine's memory. In 1945, Turing drew up his revolutionary design for an electronic computing machine his Automatic Computing Engine ( ACE ). A pilot model of the ACE ran its first programme in 1950 and the production version, the DEUCE, went on to become a cornerstone of the fledgling British computer industry. The first personal computer was based on Turing's ACE. This book describes Turing's struggle to build the modern computer. It contains first-hand accounts by Turing and by the pioneers of computing who worked with him. The book describes the hardware and software of the ACE and contains chapters describing Turing's path-breaking research in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial Life (A-Life). Turing and the computer B. Jack Copeland and Diane Proudfoot in Alan Turing's Automatic Computing Engine: The Master Codebreaker's Struggle to build the Modern Computer Published in print: 2005 Published Online: January 2008 ISBN: eisbn: acprof:oso/ This chapter discusses Turing's contributions to the field of computing. Topics covered include the Turing machine, cryptanalytic machines, the Page 1 of 6

2 ACE and the EDVAC, the Manchester computer, artificial intelligence, and artificial life. Nutrient cycling as an emergent property David M. Wilkinson in Fundamental Processes in Ecology: An earth systems approach Published in print: 2006 Published Online: September 2007 ISBN: eisbn: acprof:oso/ Arguments based on both in vitro and in silico models suggest that biogeochemical cycles will readily evolve on planets with life, along with many of the putative fundamental processes described in this book. Artificial life models illustrate the potential for these emergent cycling systems to have a positive Gaian effect. The well-known potential for exponential growth in unconstrained ecological systems suggests that these emergent systems will often regulate their environments around low nutrient states (biotic plunder), rather than at states which optimize productivity. In this context, it makes sense to define Gaia in relation to prolonged habitability of a planet, but not as a process which maximises biological productivity. BOTTOM UP AND DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACHES Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen in Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong Published in print: 2009 Published Online: January 2009 ISBN: eisbn: acprof:oso/ This chapter surveys bottom up approaches to the development of artificial moral agents. These approaches apply methods from machine learning, Kohlberg's theory of moral development, and techniques from artificial life (Alife) and evolutionary robotics, such as evolution through genetic algorithms, to the goal of facilitating the emergence of moral capacities from general aspects of intelligence. Such approaches hold out the prospect that moral behavior is a self organizing phenomenon in which cooperation and a shared set of moral instincts (if not a moral grammar ) might emerge this despite the logic of game theory which seems to suggest only self interested rationality can prevail in an evolutionary contest. A primary challenge for bottom up approaches is Page 2 of 6

3 how to provide sufficient safeguards against learning or evolving bad behaviors as well as good. Artificial Chemistries Wolfgang Banzhaf and Lidia Yamamoto Published in print: 2015 Published Online: September 2016 ISBN: eisbn: Item type: book Publisher: The MIT Press DOI: / mitpress/ The field of Artificial Life (ALife) is now firmly established in the scientific world, but it has yet to achieve one of its original goals: an understanding of the emergence of life on Earth. The new field of Artificial Chemistries draws from chemistry, biology, computer science, mathematics, and other disciplines to work toward that goal. For if, as it has been argued, life emerged from primitive, prebiotic forms of self-organization, then studying models of chemical reaction systems could bring ALife closer to understanding the origins of life. In Artificial Chemistries (ACs), the emphasis is on creating new interactions rather than new materials. The results can be found both in the virtual world, in certain multiagent systems, and in the physical world, in new (artificial) reaction systems. This book offers an introduction to the fundamental concepts of ACs, covering both theory and practical applications. After a general overview of the field and its methodology, the book reviews important aspects of biology, including basic mechanisms of evolution; discusses examples of ACs drawn from the literature; considers fundamental questions of how order can emerge, emphasizing the concept of chemical organization (a closed and self-maintaining set of chemicals); and surveys a range of applications, which include computing, systems modeling in biology, and synthetic life. An appendix provides a Python toolkit for implementing ACs. Digital Evolution and the Emergence of Complexity John Johnston in The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI Published in print: 2008 Published Online: August 2013 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: The MIT Press DOI: / mitpress/ This chapter charts the history of artificial life (ALife) after Langton in relation to theories of evolution, emergence, and complex adaptive systems by examining a series of experiments carried out on various software platforms, including Thomas Ray s Tierra, John Holland s Page 3 of 6

4 Echo, Christoph Adami s Avida, Andrew Pargellis Amoeba, Tim Taylor s Cosmos, and Larry Yaeger s PolyWorld. It concludes by considering the limits of the first phase of ALife research and the new research initiatives represented by living computation and attempts to create an artificial protocell. Open Evolution and Human Agency: The Pragmatics of Upstream Ethics in the Design of Artificial Life George Khushf in The Ethics of Protocells: Moral and Social Implications of Creating Life in the Laboratory Published in print: 2009 Published Online: August 2013 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: The MIT Press DOI: / mitpress/ This chapter argues that ethical reflection must be an integral part of the development of protocell science and technology. It presents a representative example of a body of research in artificial life connected with the design of a self-assembling membrane, and shows how this new, hybrid science undermines the conditions for a traditional post hoc, downstream mode of ethical reflection. This chapter shows that traditional ethical analysis is closely intertwined with a specific view of science and technology. It suggests that upstream ethics cannot be viewed as a simple adjunct to science. An Archaeology of Artificial Life, Underwater Stefan Helmreich in Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life Published in print: 2007 Published Online: March 2013 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: University of Chicago Press DOI: / chicago/ This chapter discusses how current designers of artificial creatures place their creations in a medium in order to make them seem lifelike, and provides a commentary on the practice of finding genealogies for Artificial Life. Floating shows how the effect of empiricity can be sustained through the medium of interpretation itself. Artificial Life has been no stranger to epistemological debates about the relation between the world and the agent that knows it. Like the Museum of Jurassic Technology, an institution that reproduces, repurposes, parodies, and confuses the very notion of a museum by archiving and Page 4 of 6

5 displaying knowledge and artifacts that may or may not be part of actual human history, Artificial Life simulations may be a setting of and for confabulation where hermeneutics is suspended. Introduction: The Sistine Gap Jessica Riskin in Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life Published in print: 2007 Published Online: March 2013 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: University of Chicago Press DOI: / chicago/ This book is about a long tradition of attempts to sound the Sistine gap. It discusses the efforts to simulate life in machinery, to synthesize life out of material parts, and to measure living beings against inanimate mechanisms. A historical approach to artificial life is also presented. The chapter then contributes to the current conventions regarding the nature of animal life, sentience, and human cognition. Moreover, the book is divided into three parts. Part 1 explores the efforts to connect intellect with matter, souls with mechanisms, magic with engineering. Part 2 emphasizes the importance of interactions within living beings, among the distributed parts of the complex systems that comprise them. Part 3 concentrates on the exchanges between creatures and the outside world, and on attempts to understand life in terms of these exchanges. Finally, an overview of the chapters included in this book is given. Artificial Life and the Homunculus in Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature Published in print: 2004 Published Online: March 2013 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: University of Chicago Press DOI: / chicago/ This chapter discusses artificial life and the homunculus. The vast literature focusing on alchemy in the debate on art and nature often draws on the spontaneous generation of animals for examples that are relevant to alchemical transmutation. Late antique and medieval theories of artificial life can be broken into two main categories: those predicated on the theory of spontaneous generation, primarily as outlined in the biological works of Aristotle; and those based on the cosmogonyc myths of a creator God, like the golem of medieval Judaism. One of the great pillars in the edifice of artificial life was Aristotle's theory of sexual, as opposed to spontaneous, generation. The concept of the marvelous power of male sperm, like the ability of specific types of matter to Page 5 of 6

6 generate life spontaneously, opened up a vast field of speculation about the possibilities of artificial life. Page 6 of 6