There are many references to it in public discussions, but trying to learn about it from Wikipedia is like reading in a new foreign language.
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Eli5 is. A Turing machine is a very very simple computer. This computer has a single long papersstrip it can read from and can write upon. And all it does is read a single digit and then write a new digit instead and move up or down the paperstrip. It also keeps a state of what action it has previously performed and this state influences the next action… Such a simple machine can theoretically solve any problem that is solvable…. That’s a Turing machine…
That’s the eli5 part now a bit extra. now via the state table you can Programm it to do any given tasks,but for any state table it just does one task… Modern PCs are basically universal Turing machines in that they can compute any problem not just one. They are basically every possible Turing machine in one such a universal Turing machine is called Turing complete, because it can cumpute any cumputable problem.
It’s a deliberately minimal theoretical computer, which is used to reduce the complexities of any computer down to a very simple model that you can mathematically analyse.
Doing so allowed people, including Turing, to formulate mathematical answers about what a computer can or cannot be used to compute. The simplicity of the “machine”, which is just a theoretical model, not an actual machine, meant that you could actually prove some theories about it. Because the machine is also “mathematically equivalent” to every old or modern computer too (and that was quite easy to prove itself) it lets you expand those same theories to “real” computers of all kinds (we believe even quantum computers follow the same kind of rules).
It’s like boiling down a solar system to a few balls spinning around and then using that model to make predictions, assumptions and insights about how our solar system works, but in a mathematically-rigorous way.
Specifically, Turing machines can tell you what is “computable” and what is not, and there are literally some things that we then thought of that are not “computable” at all.
Basically, it’s a machine that runs back and forth on a strip of 1’s and 0’s and can change any 1 to a 0 or vice versa and read the state of the current location. Any computer that can essentially be broken down to this is considered Turing Complete.
For example, your hard drive is a string of 1’s and 0’s and and it can either read or write to a given spot on the disk. The rest of the computer is just giving instructions to that disk.
This is different from the Turing Test. The Turing Test is a theoretical test that can be given to a computer so a human can tell the difference between a human and a computer. AI is an attempt to get a computer to pass the Turing Test.
here is an amazing answer from Ben Eater r/beneater
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqNDk_UJW4k?t=190
You can actually build a Turing Machine on your own, Ben explains step by step how to do that, this is the playlist.
You’ve gotten some good answers, but I’ll give it a shot too. A Turing machine is almost like a flowchart, but it has one important addition, memory. Imagine you have a flow chart with some directions and an infinite paper tape divided into cells. One of the cells is designated as the current cell. As you follow the directions in the flowchart, the flowchart might direct you to write a symbol in the cell (erasing whatever used to be there if anything) or to move the current cell left or right by one space. The path you take through the flowchart can depend on the symbol in the current cell. What is computed obviously depends on the flowchart you are following, but Turing proved that it is possible to come up with a flowchart that will emulate the behavior or other flowcharts given the right initial information on the tape. For example, say I come up with a flowchart that will print out the digits of pi. Then I come up with a flowchart that prints out all the squares of the positive integers. These two flow charts have different behaviors. But if you are clever you can come up with a flowchart that reads a description of another flowchart off the tape and then emulates the behavior of the described flowchart.
The practical implication is this. You can design a machine to do one particular computational task. But you can also design a machine that can change its behavior based just on the initial information it has been given.
I just want to add that real computers are not (and will never be) as powerful as a Turing machine, because they have a finite memory (Turing machines have infinite memory). Our computers, not matter how fast they are, are no more powerful than simple finite-state machines.
Comes to Explain Like I’m Five…
Ends up lost in the script of Good Will Hunting with all this mathematical complexity.
It’s an incredibly basic computer that operates by shifting 1s and 0s around. If you understand binary programming at all, a Turing machine is essentially the most basic mechanical computer possible with only a single register and basically no memory (not technically true, but functionally true in terms of modern computing. It’ll read the input tape for commands, these commands will be in strings of 1s and 0s that cause slightly different mechanical shifts in the machine and lock certain components in place causing the machine to manipulate the data on the tape rather than just read it. There are tons of examples on YouTube of people running through explanations with graphics because of how common the topic is in CompSci curriculum. The machines are also where the term ‘Turing complete’ comes from, programs able to run entirely in sequence on a Turing machine are said to be ‘Turing complete’ and although in the past this was a useful status to have modern computing doesn’t really have the opportunity to quality check in the manner, most things are “if it works its fine” and aren’t built to high standards.
Watch the movie “The Imitation Game”, its all about Alan Turing and is actually a fascinating movie
I’m too lazy to check the username out but I can just imagine an AI posting this question for self discovery… @r3 ¥○u a hu|/|an ●p?
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