Turing Oversold: A critical reassessment of credit in computer science history
By
@SchmidhuberAI
Summary
Jürgen Schmidhuber argues that Alan Turing's contributions to computer science are often greatly exaggerated at the expense of other pioneers like Kurt Gödel, Alonzo Church, and others. The article contends that Gödel, not Turing, should be considered the founder of theoretical computer science, as Gödel's 1931 incompleteness theorems predated and laid the groundwork for Turing's 1936 work. Schmidhuber systematically details the contributions of numerous pre-Turing pioneers and argues that historical credit has been unfairly concentrated on Turing due to various cultural and historical factors, while emphasizing that this is not Turing's fault personally.
Source
Twitter / XTuring Oversold: A critical reassessment of credit in computer science historypeople.idsia.chKey quotes
· 4 pulledAlan M. Turing made certain significant contributions to computer science. However, their importance and impact is often greatly exaggerated, at the expense of the field's pioneers. It's not Turing's fault, though.
Gödel was the first to publish a paper on the concept of a universal computer, and the first to prove that certain problems are algorithmically unsolvable.
The standard story of computer science is a story of Turing, Turing, Turing. But the historical record tells a different tale.
It is not the fault of Turing, though. He was a brilliant mathematician who made real contributions. The problem is not with Turing but with the narrative that has been constructed around him.
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