An unorganized machine is a concept mentioned in a 1948 report in which
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical co ...
suggested that the infant human
cortex
Cortex or cortical may refer to:
Biology
* Cortex (anatomy), the outermost layer of an organ
** Cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the vertebrate cerebrum, part of which is the ''forebrain''
*** Motor cortex, the regions of the cerebral cortex i ...
was what he called an "unorganised machine".
Overview
Turing defined the class of unorganized machines as largely random in their initial construction, but capable of being trained to perform particular tasks. Turing's unorganized machines were in fact very early examples of randomly connected, binary
neural networks, and Turing claimed that these were the simplest possible model of the
nervous system
In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes ...
.
Turing had been interested in the possibility of simulating neural systems for at least the previous two years. In correspondence with
William Ross Ashby
W. Ross Ashby (6 September 1903 – 15 November 1972) was an English psychiatrist and a pioneer in cybernetics, the study of the science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things. His first name was not ...
in 1946 he writes:
{{cquote, I am more interested in the possibility of producing models of the action of the brain than in the applications to practical computing...although the brain may in fact operate by changing its neuron circuits by the growth of axons and dendrites, we could nevertheless make a model, within the
ACE
An ace is a playing card, die or domino with a single pip. In the standard French deck, an ace has a single suit symbol (a heart, diamond, spade, or club) located in the middle of the card, sometimes large and decorated, especially in the c ...
, in which this possibility was allowed for, but in which the actual construction of the
ACE
An ace is a playing card, die or domino with a single pip. In the standard French deck, an ace has a single suit symbol (a heart, diamond, spade, or club) located in the middle of the card, sometimes large and decorated, especially in the c ...
did not alter, but only the remembered data
In his 1948 paper Turing defined two examples of his unorganized machines. The first were ''A-type machines'' — these being essentially randomly connected networks of
NAND logic gates. The second were called ''B-type machines'', which could be created by taking an A-type machine and replacing every inter-node connection with a structure called a ''connection modifier'' — which itself is made from A-type nodes. The purpose of the connection modifiers were to allow the B-type machine to undergo "appropriate interference, mimicking education" in order to organize the behaviour of the network to perform useful work. Before the term ''
genetic algorithm'' was coined, Turing even proposed the use of what he called a ''genetical search'' to configure his unorganized machines.
Compucology.net Technology and biology "Unorganized machines and the brain"
/ref> Turing claimed that the behaviour of B-type machines could be very complex when the number of nodes in the network was large, and stated that the "picture of the cortex as an unorganized machine is very satisfactory from the point of view of evolution and genetics".
Notes
External links
Alan Turing