The imitation game

“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when
using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we
are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

Location: South of Iceland
Date: 09 MAY 41, 11:30 AM GMT +0

This is the story of a war that was won also in the cold solitude of research labs. Six hundred and
sixteen days since the war started, the Nazi swastika proudly flies on most of the European
continent, which is under German control. The war, which is about to spread all over the world,
extends its boundaries to intelligence. In every battle, it is crucial to get ahead on the enemy’s next
move, obviously without showing your own. Better yet, showing false moves to your enemy.
Deep in the Atlantic Sea, the U Boot 110 Nazi submarine follows a convoy of ships meant to
replenish the African front. Meanwhile, Allies are seeking for something hugely valuable that is
transported inside the Nazi fleet to communicate with the central commands.
At noon of this day, the Nazi submarine engages with the British Destroyer “Bulldog H91”, which
heavily hits the German U Boot, forcing its crew to abandon.

This is a turning point in history. In an alternate timeline, the British Captain, Baker-Cresswell,
ordered to sink the German submarine in the depth of the sea. If that happened, you would now see
your neighborhood policeman wearing a Wehrmacht uniform.
In our reality, the British captain ordered the cease-fire, sending his troops into the German
submarine to take whatever they could find. Within the sub, they found something enormously
precious, described according to the board diaries as follows:

"The coding machine was found here, in perfect condition. Plugged in and as though it was in
actual use when abandoned. The general appearance of this machine is that of a typewriter, the
telegraphist pressed the keys and finding results peculiar sent it up the hatch."

The unbreakable Nazi Enigma machine has just come into the Allies’ hands. Apparently similar to
an ordinary typewriter, with the addition of some encrypted discs called "rotors" at the top of the
device, the Enigma machine was the pride of German intelligence. At this tool, the Nazis had
entrusted their confidential communications, which would have been decipherable only by another
operator using the same machine, with the same encrypted disks used to conceal the message.
It is precisely at this point that the unstoppable march of Nazi divisions met the wrongly dishonored
genius of Alan Turing. Working on the Enigma machine recovered from the depths of the German
submarine, Turing set up a sophisticated computer, called the "Bomb”, that was able to decipher the
key used by Enigma to send messages. Thanks to him, the British kept secreting the
communications of the enemy, marking a turning point in the war conflict.Still, one question remains.

Why had it never dawned on the Axis that Enigma was being broken?
Maybe hypnotized by the technological expertise that had gone into the construction of Enigma, the
Germans pointed blank the possibility that the British could have decrypted their signals.
At any rate, historians unanimously agree that, without the violation of the Enigma machine, the
war would have continued for years with a huge price of lives to pay. Germany would have
probably been able to complete the development of uranium bombs, turning the conflict into a nuke
war. Nobody knows when the war would have ended, yet it is quite doubtful whether this would
have been a good thing.

In spite of his efforts, Turing soon became an uncomfortable personality, knowing too many State
secrets. His homosexuality —declared under torture— did not help as he was persecuted until he
was, most likely, induced to suicide. Another example of the saying "no one is a prophet at home"
and a shameful loss of one of the fathers of computer science.
In fact, besides saving the world from Nazi fury, Turing pioneered the study of Artificial
Intelligence: according to his theory, machines aren’t able to think as people do, but quite
differently. However, just because machines think differently, it does not mean that they do not
eventually think.

As a proof of concept, Turing set up a famous experiment, which will be dignified by the name
“Turing's Test.”. This test is inspired by a game called "Imitation Game" where a male and a female participant dial-up with a third-person using a computer (in common parlance we would say chatting). The purpose of the game, for the third person, was to guess who was the man and who the woman based on the answers given in the game.

What's that got to do with Artificial Intelligence? It's soon said: in his own version of the Imitation
Game, Turing proposed a variation in which one of the two individuals (man or woman) was
replaced by a computer software, which joined in the game. The goal was now to guess who was
the machine and who the human.
From this experiment comes the first definition of Artificial Intelligence: to be classified as such, a
machine must be able to deceive human judgment, at least in most cases.
Twenty years later, a computer scientist will prove that even a simple computer program can fool
the human judgment to some extent.