Alan Turing: Turing Tricks

Alan Turing was a British mathematical genius, known today as the Father of Artificial Intelligence. He famously broke the Nazi's "Enigma Code," a discovery which helped end WWII. His work for the British government was top secret, so when he was arrested for being gay, he couldn't pull the "but I'm a hero card" to save himself. He endured two years of chemical castration before killing himself (or eating an apple laced with cyanide due to an accidental cross contamination - which feels more likely?). His tools for testing computer development are still in use today, 80 years later, and the "Turing Test" remains the measure of determining the level of consciousness in a machine. The British Government issued an apology in 2009, with Prime Minister Gordon Brown offering an apology on behalf of the government. The Alan Turing law is now the unofficial name for the pardon issued by Britain for the thousands of queer people it imprisoned. Laws against being gay have a long root (OK, allow us one bad pun) in British history and we're here to discuss their origins and their changes over time.