Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

One of these kids is not the same

2014; Elsevier BV; Volume: 1; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s2215-0366(14)00021-2

2215-0374

Simon Guerrier,

Ethics and Social Impacts of AI

In Short Circuit (1986), Newton Crosby (played by Steve Guttenberg) explains the difference between man and machine. A machine “doesn't get pissed off. It doesn't get happy, it doesn't get sad, it doesn't laugh at your jokes. It just runs programmes.” When a robot laughs at a joke, Crosby can only conclude that it is alive. If Crosby watched The Imitation Game (2014), he might conclude that Alan Turing—the pioneer of the computer whose name is used in the famous test of artificial intelligence—was actually a machine. The Imitation Game is a beautifully shot, beautifully acted version of Turing's life. The focus is his efforts during World War 2 to break the German code Enigma. In flashbacks, we visit Turing at school, where he sends coded messages to a boy he's fallen in love with. We also skip forward to 1951 where Turing is arrested for an offence under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885—and one stubborn policeman thinks he's also a spy. As a result, we emerge from the film with a comprehensive sense of Turing. For all it spells out the tragedy of a brilliant man destroyed by the prejudice of the state, it's an engaging and often very funny portrait. The cast are superb and the production design quite magnificent. It's a film bursting with quality. We're continually shown, too, why Turing's work was so important. We're there as bombs rain down on London or ships are sunk at sea. We see how the Germans are slowly starving Britain, sinking the food convoys from America. The sight of wounded soldiers or word of some family member out on active service brings the reality home. The British are losing the war, but cracking Enigma will change that. The film addresses, too, the different moral context. Captions at the end tell us 49 000 men were convicted of “gross indecency” between 1885 and 1967. Yet, for all Turing passes notes to another man or admits to paying a man to touch his penis, we never really witness his gayness. There's no kiss or embrace with another man, just the passing of a note. The point seems to be that he learns to be secretive, which helps him in his war work, but not in normal life. But perhaps the film is coy in dealing with the subject. We also follow the struggles of Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), a brilliant cryptanalyst overlooked by all but Turing. Again, points are made about the wrongness of past attitudes and how much things have changed. Yet Clarke is one of only two speaking roles for women in the film, and the sexist attitudes are often played simply as comedy. The film's funniest moments, though, come from Turing's lack of social graces. He thinks nothing of going over his commander's head and writing directly to Winston Churchill. At one point, Turing's colleagues at Bletchley interrupt his calculations to say they're going for lunch. He nods, absorbing the detail, then returns to his work, failing to grasp their implied invitation to join them. In a flashback, young Turing complains that, to him, cryptography is no different from talking: people never say quite what they mean; the meaning must be decoded. Three times we're told that Turing being different from everyone else is why he can do the impossible and break the unbreakable code. The Imitation Game is, says director Morten Tyldum, a celebration of uniqueness and individuality. But what the film says and what it shows us do not match exactly. Turing's—and Joan's—efforts to win over his colleagues at Bletchley are what save the project. Later, the team's most important breakthrough comes from imagining themselves in the place of their opposite numbers. They win not by being different but by learning to fit in. Turing's famous test of artificial intelligence is also about not being different. In Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950), he argues that we don't know how to define intelligence, so reframes the question: without seeing them and only judging from their answers to a series of questions, can we tell a computer and person apart? If a computer can fit in well enough to fool us, it's no longer different and must be intelligent—however that might be defined. It's a shame the film misses that distinction, especially since the clue is in the title. The “imitation game” is the author's own name for what we call the Turing test. The Imitation Game Directed by Morten Tyldum, 2014. Black Bear Pictures/Bristol Automotive, USARead Computing Machinery and Intelligence by AM Turing (1950) at http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/content/LIX/236/433 The Imitation Game Directed by Morten Tyldum, 2014. Black Bear Pictures/Bristol Automotive, USA Read Computing Machinery and Intelligence by AM Turing (1950) at http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/content/LIX/236/433