How did Alan Turing's life affect what he wrote?

Question

Especially in reference to COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE by Turing. Any thoughts on his personal life and work reflecting on this?

Answer 1

Considering he worked as a mathematician, logician and cryptographer, I think that his work and life had a great deal to do with what in wrote in "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"

I suppose that I feel a certain admiration for Alan Turing since I was gifted with an aptitude for mathematics, a fascination with logic, work as a software developer, and consider it my life’s pursuit to build what Alan Turing coined "Artificial Intelligence".

I could only imagine that working as a cryptographer must have had a great deal to do with his theories on AI. In order for a cryptographer do to break a cipher they must spend a great deal of time running through numbers to find patterns. It seems obvious that with enough time a person might conceder how a machine could look for any possible pattern and how that machine might function. Logic must have also had to do a great deal with his writings. Logic is the science of reason. Learning how people properly reason is at the foundations of both logic and AI.

I find his Theological Objection to be most interesting. I believe that his writing has at least a mild dose of antagonism toward a belief in God, but certainly not a total disregard. I believe this his sympathy toward religion might have been partially due to his upbringing and schooling at St Michael’s. His antagonism might have been partially due to his homosexuality, and partially due to his naturally scientific way of thinking.