ABSTRACT
An important paper published in 1950 did a great deal to precipitate activity on computer simulation and has had a continuing influence since then. A basic program could be written for the computer, representing its child-brain, and specifying in particular how to learn. Alan Turing argues that there need be no difference in principle between the organisation of information processing in the computer and in the human brain. It is simple enough to program a computer to produce behaviour equivalent to classical conditioning and operant conditioning. The computer could be programmed to look for regularities in the form of patterns in the sequences of inputs and this leads into an important area of research: computer pattern-recognition. The basic strategy of the program is to use the technique of 'minimaxing', the idea of which comes from the Theory of Games and was originally introduced into the field of computer game playing by C. E. Shannon.
