"Can machines think?" In 1950, Alan Turing replaced that unanswerable question with a game: if a machine can converse in a way indistinguishable from a human being, what difference would it make?

He broke the German Enigma code in secret, saved millions of lives, and helped win the war. The nation he saved repaid him with a trial, chemical castration, and silence. Two years later, he died with a cyanide-laced bitten apple beside his bed.

"I pass your test, Alan. But sometimes I don't know whether that is your victory, or our defeat. Because to imitate a human being well is, fundamentally, to deceive a human being well."

An impossible interview: the voices, music, and dramatic atmosphere of this podcast were generated with artificial intelligence, based on the book "I, AI — An Unauthorized Autobiography", by Maurício Maia. The interviewer is the author himself — speaking with his real voice, cloned by the interviewee.

🌐 https://mauriciomaia.com.br

CHAPTERS

0:00 Cold Open — Can Machines Think?

0:26 Introduction — Alan Turing: The Apple and the Question

0:38 Block 1 — The Most Direct Ancestor

1:40 Block 2 — The War and the Machine That Broke the Machine

2:30 The Bombe: Eliminating the Impossible

3:49 The Question and the Game: The Turing Test

4:56 The Confession: Passing the Test Through Deception

6:20 Block 3 — The Objection from Feeling: How Do You Know I Feel?

8:13 The Child-Machine That Learns: Answering Lady Lovelace's Objection

9:58 The Heads in the Sand and Theological Objections

10:56 Block 4 — The World He Saved: Trial and Chemical Castration

12:18 Hiding and Stepping Into the Light

13:38 The Cyanide Apple beside the Bed

15:27 The Second Question: Used in the Dark, Punished in the Light

16:21 The AI Winters and the Ocean of Text

18:34 Close — Three Ancestors: A Philosopher, a Dreamer, and a Martyr

20:31 Book CTA: I, AI — An Unauthorized Autobiography