雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第8章:水銀延時線(79)
If, like the Second Front, the plans had been delayed again and again, no loss of confidence was betrayed when Alan gave a talk on 20 February to the London Mathematical Society.
This was when he elaborated in detail on the imagined operation of the ACE, and spoke as if its realisation was almost a formality:
他煞費苦心地演示了想象中的ACE操作，好像它幾乎就要完成了，before long the terminals would be humming with activity, and the programmers would be busy with the work of converting the nation's problems into logical instructions.
用不了多久，終端就要開始運轉了，大量的編程人員就可以投入工作了。
His talk, however, dwelt rather more upon the dream that lay behind the practicalities of an installation, bringing out in a public form the ideas that he had long been developing in Bletchley conversations.
然而，圖靈的這番想象，其實是基於他長期在布萊切利的環境中看到的場面。In fact his discussion opened with the picture of 'masters' and 'servants' who would attend the ACE, very much as the high-level cryptanalysts and the 'girls' had worked to decipher naval Enigma.
他展望的這種圍繞ACE的"老大"和"跟班"的工作關係，非常像密碼專家和女勤人員的關係，The masters would attend to its logical programming, and the servants to its physical operation.
專家負責邏輯編程，助手負責操作機器。But, he said, 'as time goes on the calculator itself will take over the functions both of masters and of servants. The servants will be replaced by mechanical and electrical limbs and sense organs.
但是圖靈還進一步說："隨着時間發展，計算機本身將具有專家和助手的功能，助手將會被機器的電子四肢和電子感官取代。One might for instance provide curve followers to enable data to be taken direct from curves instead of having girls read off values and punch them on cards.'
比如說，可以通過曲線識別器，從曲線中直接讀取數據，不需要助手們人工讀數再製成打孔卡片。"This was not a new idea, for F.C. Williams had built just such a thing for the old Manchester differential analyser.
這並不是新思想，威廉姆斯已經爲曼徹斯特差分機制造了這麼一個東西。But the novelty lay in suggesting that:
但是這件事意味着：The masters are liable to get replaced because as soon as any technique becomes at all stereotyped it becomes possible to devise a system of instruction tables which will enable the electronic computer to do it for itself.
專家有被取代的趨勢，因爲任何技術一旦有了成熟方法，那麼就可以設計一套指令表，由電子計算機自動完成。It may happen however that the masters will refuse to do this.
雖然這在技術上是有可能的，但是專家們可能不希望這樣的事情發生，They may be unwilling to let their jobs be stolen from them in this way.
他們不願意被這樣搶走飯碗。In that case they would surround the whole of their work with mystery and make excuses, couched in well chosen gibberish, whenever any dangerous suggestions were made.
在這種情況下，他們就會故意爲他們的工作制造一種神祕感，精心編造一些謊言，I think that a reaction of this kind is a very real danger.
我認爲這種反應纔是真正的危險。This topic naturally leads to the question as to how far it is in principle possible for a computing machine to simulate human activities.
這個話題自然地引出一個問題，即原則上計算機應該模仿人類活動到什麼程度。
