About The Machine

This is a reading experience not a game, a memoir about what it means to live a human, unartificially intelligent life.

The Universal Turing Machine is a whole-life memoir – from the age of zero to sixty-three – with a thousand words allocated to each year. The reader can plot a course starting at 1986, a year for falling in love and for Garry Kasparov to check-mate ten supercomputers, blind-folded, at the same time. A very fine year for humankind.

Re-enacting the mental leaps of anticipation and memory, other years can be reached by moving like a knight in a game of chess. Available moves are outlined in blue, and progress can be monitored by turning on tracking which marks every opened square with a red dot.

The British computing pioneer Alan Turing famously designed a test to establish whether a distinction could be made between human and machine intelligence. This distinction becomes increasingly relevant as AI makes its presence felt in life and art, both as a parasite and a gateway to new possibilities.

In the field of creative writing, these memories unique to me are a way of asserting that I am – and I was – authentically human. Difficult, imperfect, awkward. I did try to act intelligently, not always with great success.

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No Artificial Intelligence tools or Large Language Models were used in the writing of The Universal Turing Machine, which is available to read in full for free. Contributions to the site’s upkeep can be made here, and further information about The Universal Turing Machine is available at www.richardbeard.info