The Universal Turing Machine in @aeon.co - not just fun to write, but on the ramparts against AI.
aeon.co/essays/sure-...
23.01.2026 17:36
👍 0
🔁 0
💬 0
📌 0
The Universal Turing Machine in @aeon.co - not just fun to write, but on the ramparts against AI.
aeon.co/essays/sure-...
It is very much in the interests of AGI, in this phase soon after the Singularity, to appear to be stupid.
Zoom Workshop #4, tomorrow at 8pm UK time. Anyone wanting to attend who isn't on the list, email connect@universalturingmachine.co.uk
Topics of discussion: submissions; the upcoming personalised UTM template. See you there!
'A birthday in early January mapped each calendar year to a specific age, which was convenient for reasons of structural neatness (2023, 56). Throughout most of 1969 I was two years old, and fiercely proud to be human.' 1969, 2
The beauty of the Knight's Tour, or the many ways to read your way round a Turing Machine memoir.
'And at the carol service at Christmas, I soon discovered, she loved to belt out the show tunes. We didn’t have to kiss straight away, considering how many times we’d kiss in the future, but there was no harm in getting started.' 2018, 51
universalturingmachine.co.uk
Thrilled the memoir writer Miranda Doyle is able to join our UTM Zoom workshop next week (Tuesday 16th Dec, 8pm UK time). This month’s discussion: real-life other people and how to write them.
'In the USA they had Trump and in Britain we had Brexit, as if being smart was suddenly less important. Human stupidity was out and about, as if at a specific moment we lost sight of certain objectives.' 2018, 51
universalturingmachine.co.uk
Monthly newsletter out today. Tips, reminders and all things UTM. If anyone wants a copy and isn't on the list: email connect@universalturingmachine.co.uk
'Large language models couldn’t come close to knowing how life had been for me. They configured rounded characters who developed in arcs whereas time travel disintegrated the self, always had done.' 2023, 56
'I was from the last generation of true believers in the written word, both as a medium for self-expression and an act of resistance. The page was a place where time stopped. What
was left? What was written.' 2023, 56
universalturingmachine.co.uk/utm/
'The Universal Turing Machine should pass the Turing Test, as a book that was convincingly human. Difficult, imperfect, awkward. Write what you know.' 2023, 56
'In The Universal Turing Machine questions would be raised and questions answered, not always in that order. If there was a risk of confusion, there was the reward of authenticity: a narrative that progressed one thing after another wasn’t true to life. Not enough things. Not mixed up enough.' 2023
Really enjoyed this piece about @richbeard.bsky.social's new memoir project. Quite tempted to give The Universal Turing Machine (@universalturing.bsky.social) a go. Give them both a follow.
'Over her lifetime the Duchess had got so much of what she wanted that she was largely immune to pleasure. She felt at best a mild satisfaction when something was almost as good as it used to be.' 1991, 24
Welcome! A home for anyone who wants to write a memoir and isn’t sure where to start. Full details of how to get involved:
www.universalturingmachine.org
In the next phases, the Universal Turing Machine will grow like this. More details on Monday.
Story of a life. How would you organise yours? Up to a thousand words for each square.
'The human need to understand things as a story instead of a series of discrete events can lead to many flawed conclusions.'
Garry Kasparov (2025, 62).
The Bookseller jumps the gun - not the 8th but the 15th, next Monday, for the next phase of the UTM. Not surprised they couldn't wait.
'Writing was an information storage technology that allowed me to accumulate thoughts outside the brain, and I loved to do that, to the best of my ability.' 1996, 29
'Fiction required forward planning. Along with motivated characters in detailed locations engaged in plausible actions, a novel was like a game of chess – readers were the partner across the board manipulated from one disposition to another.' 2002, 35
'The plot was constructed from nothing and the nothing showed through. My ordered cause and effect was no match for the muddle of non-fiction life, and the showmanship of story-telling failed to convince me that my heart was still aglow.' 2019, 52
universalturingmachine.co.uk/utm/
'A game for the library and the sanitorium, for the asylum, the in-time play of chess was absurdly inferior to football, to shins and slide-tackles and the sweet physical possession of the ball at my feet. I was too much body, not enough brain.' 1980, 13
universalturingmachine.co.uk
'I intended to live and write for free in an eighteenth-century French chateau. In return, the bachelor owner of the chateau expected what he could also get, he told me, from any boy in the village, not for free, admittedly, but in most cases for about five hundred francs.’ 1990, 23
'Neither branch of the family contained writers, though Mum did love to edit the furniture.' 1973, 6
universalturingmachine.co.uk
'My favourite exhibit at Bletchley was Hut 11 and the replica of Alan Turing’s Colossus, where he once worked with his prep-school hair, scratching his head and making a squelching noise with his mouth when deep in thought.' 2027, 60
universalturingmachine.co.uk
'Death could cut a person off at any moment, but like everyone I pretended I didn’t know this future to be true, and I didn’t let the certainty of death spoil my enjoyment of cricket.’ 1979, 12
universalturingmachine.co.uk
