雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第8章:水銀延時線(82)
Rather, in speaking of a computer 'simulating human activities', he had in mind the simulation of learning,
in such a way that after a point the machine would not merely be doing 'whatever we know how to order it to perform,' as Lady Lovelace had claimed, for no one would know how it was working:
在這個前提下，機器不只會執行洛甫雷斯夫人說的"我們已經知道明確步驟的事"：It has been said that computing machines can only carry out the purposes that they are instructed to do.
有人說，計算機只能按照指令執行程序。
This is certainly true in the sense that if they do something other than what they were instructed then they have just made some mistake.
在某種意義上，這種說法是正確的，這種意義就是如果它們不按指令工作，那就說明它們出錯了。It is also true that the intention in constructing these machines in the first instance is to treat them as slaves,
我們剛開始建造這些機器時，確實是把它們視爲奴隸，giving them only jobs which have been thought out in detail, jobs such that the user of the machine fully understands in principle what is going on all the time.
只讓他們做一些步驟完全清晰的工作，理論上說，機器的操作者在任何時候都對機器的運行狀態完全清楚。Up till the present machines have only been used in this way.
迄今爲止，所有的機器都是這樣工作的。But is it necessary that they should always be used in such a manner?
但是，它們是否只能在這樣的方式下工作？Let us suppose we have set up a machine with certain initial instruction tables, so constructed that these tables might on occasion, if good reason arose, modify those tables.
我們假設我們建造了這樣一種機器，它有初始的指令表，並且能在滿足一定的條件時，自動地修改這個指令表。One can imagine that after the machine had been operating for some time, the instructions would have altered out of recognition, but nevertheless still be such that one would have to admit that the machine was still doing very worthwhile calculations.
可以想見，這種機器運行一段時間之後，指令表就會改得令我們無法理解，但是我們必須承認，機器仍然是在有意義地運行着。
