This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be. We have to have some experience with the machine before we really know its capabilities. It may take years before we settle down to the new possibilities, but I do not see why it should not enter any one of the fields normally covered by the human intellect, and eventually compete on equal terms." - Meaning and context.">
QuotesCosmos
'The Mechanical Brain. Answer Found to 300 Year Old Problem' The Times newspaper, 11 June 1949 page 4 column 5.
• The sentence in bold appears on the latest British £50 bank note featuring Alan Turing which was released on 23 June 2021 on what would have been his 109th birthday.
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This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be. We have to have some experience with the machine before we really know its capabilities. It may take years before we settle down to the new possibilities, but I do not see why it should not enter any one of the fields normally covered by the human intellect, and eventually compete on equal terms.

— Alan Turing

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be. We have to have some experience with the machine before we really know its capabilities. It may take years before we settle down to the new possibilities, but I do not see why it should not enter any one of the fields normally covered by the human intellect, and eventually compete on equal terms." in the context of "'The Mechanical Brain. Answer Found to 300 Year Old Problem' The Times newspaper, 11 June 1949 page 4 column 5.
• The sentence in bold appears on the latest British £50 bank note featuring Alan Turing which was released on 23 June 2021 on what would have been his 109th birthday." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Alan Turing" (Quotes) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

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Alan Turing

About Alan Turing

Alan Mathison Turing (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.