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Article 2301 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: Peter Seibel
Subject: Turing test, parallel processors, and neural nets
Message-ID: <1991Dec20.061406.1609@news.yale.edu>
Summary: A few questions.
Keywords: Turing test parallel neural nets
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Organization: Yale University
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1991 06:14:06 GMT

A few questions about Turing test and related matters.  I would appreciate
answers and/or references to the literature:

How does Turing's proof of the equivalence of all discreet state machines apply
to parallel computers and neural nets?  Could they necessarily be simulated on
a Universal Turing Machine?  As far as I understand, parallel machines could
theoretically be simulated by a UTM, but are there any differences in practice?
 (My intuition -- as a non-expert in AI but having thought a lot about it
lately -- is that there is some importance difference between actually running
several Turing machines in parallel that would be able to access and modify
somewhat what is on the other ticker tapes and simulating this on a single
machine.  Is there anything to this, and if so is there a more formal way to
put it.  Basically my problem is that I can't picture a single tape Turing
machine having any sort of self awareness but I can imagine that some sort of
massively parallel or neural-net machine might -- but perhaps I am just being a
mystic.)
 
Thanks,
Peter Seibel

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