London AI summit throws spotlight on scientist Alan Turing's legacy
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak alongside the portrait of Alan Turing
The first global artificial intelligence (AI) safety summit in London this week (Nov 1-Nov 2) has been described as the UK's embattled Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's much-talked about ambition to make Britain a "technology superpower". The summit, with the attendees constituted by the likes of billionaire business magnate Elon Musk and the ChatGPT-maker OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has a modest and narrowly focused agenda.
The London summit aims to ensure the safe use of AI technologies to facilitate their widespread beneficial use.
"AI will bring new knowledge, new opportunities for economic growth, new advances in human capability, and the chance to solve problems we once thought beyond us. But it also brings new dangers and new fears," UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had said last week.
Spotlight on legendary Mathematician-scientist Alan Turing
The summit is being convened at the famous Bletchley Park, where British mathematician-scientist Alan Turing and his team of mathematicians did early research to crack the messages sent by "Enigma", a device used by the German military to encode strategic messages during the second world war.
The feat has been the subject of film The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
Also watch |Sunak invites China for AI summit, Tories slam decision
Turing also detailed a procedure known as the Turing Test, forming the basis for artificial intelligence.
What is Turing Test?
Turing Test begins with a simple question: can machines think?
Alan Turing proposed that if a human could not tell whether they were speaking to an artificially intelligent (AI) machine or another human after five minutes of questioning, this would demonstrate AI has human-like intelligence.
No AI system, including the technology behind ChatGPT, has been able to pass the Turing Test so far.
Why is it significant?
The UK choosing the former site of Alan Turing's "enigma" experiments reflects UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's attempt to remind the world of AI's origins in Britain amid the US and China's growing ascent in AI development. Prior to the summit, Sunak has asserted Britain's purported role as "not just the intellectual home but the geographical home of global AI safety regulation".