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Let others debate whether a robotic child would have "qualia" or "aboutness" — Turing is worried that the other kids would make fun of it at school.
This is a scene from Breaking the Code (1996), a BBC television adaptation of the well-received stage play of the same name, which was in turn adapted from Andrew Hodges' biography of Turing.
For background material on the subject poor Turing is trying to explain, see, e.g., Aaronson's lecture notes. And if it's Turing-themed fiction you seek, there's always Greg Egan's "Oracle" (2000).
Comments
It's a bit distracting that Jacobi uses the exact same stutter as in I, Claudius.
Not to sound too sappy, but that story made me cry the first time I read it. Maybe I'm a machine.
Here's another of my favorite SF takes on AI and consciousness: I, Row-Boat. And one from the other end of the grimness scale: Blindsight (great story, but I hate that one clichéd trope of armchair evolutionary biology that Watts falls for - the one he talks about in the notes. As a biologist he should know better.)
Posted by: windy | October 17, 2008 7:30 PM
Well, at least it sounds like he got the job.
But did Turing really talk about "Turing machines"? I find that hard to stomach.
Posted by: Sili | October 19, 2008 11:16 AM