What did codebreaker Alan Turing do to deserve being dragged back to life like this?
The tortured mathematical genius who helped defeat the Nazis – and invented AI in the process – has been resurrected digitally. Is this what he would really have wanted his technology to be used for, wonders Paul Clements
If you’ve been on social media lately, you will have seen it – the viral ad in which Alan Turing is brought back to life by the artificial intelligence he made possible, to promote a firm selling chatbot learning courses. Your algorithms may have spared you the video so far, but it, and the furore it has generated, is but a click away.
Singaporean tech company Genius Group has magically “revived” the tortured mathematical genius in digitised form and, in a move that’s somehow even more objectionable, have “appointed” him as its chief AI officer.
Looking raffish and rugged, the floppy-haired and, dare I say, dashing Turing avatar – think Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Turing in The Imitation Game, but more chiselled of jaw, broader of chest and less wonky of eye – is heard to intone, in a wandering, transatlantic accent: “The real me died 70 years ago. My gosh, you’ve all been busy, haven’t you, while I’ve been away… Anyways, nice to be back."
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