The Turk

The enraptured crowd focused on the wonder in front of their widening eyes.

This was no mere trinket or toy, like those they had heard tales about back home. This was something to travel to witness—a once in a lifetime event nobody in the crowd would forget.

Here, in front of them, was a machine seemingly capable of human thought, strategy, and skill. The very idea that a construct of wood and metal could rival the intellect of a seasoned chess player was nothing short of miraculous in their eyes.

This was the Turk, an elaborate automation that could win at chess against some of the best players in the world. Imagine how astounding this feat must have seemed two centuries ago, before the industrial revolution had taken hold in Europe, as Napoleon’s soldiers’ buttons were beginning to rot.

In an age where machinery was often rudimentary and predictable, the Turk was an enigma, a spectacle that defied understanding. It represented the promise of a future where technological wonders could surpass human capabilities. Those lucky enough to see it were witnessing the future.

Too bad it was all fake.

How It Happened

Today, we understand how the Mechanical Turk worked, but very few alive at the time knew that the genius behind the mechanical chess-playing marvel was more like the Wizard of Oz than like the Jacquard Loom. Hidden within the apparatus, a human chess master manipulated the Turk's moves, creating the illusion of machine intelligence. This machine had no ghost inside—no inherent intelligence or capability. It was all a sham.

Fast forward to today, and we find ourselves amidst a technological renaissance. The ghost really is in the machine—effective tools that rely on generative AI can solve mental puzzles on the spot, and quickly.

While the Mechanical Turk was empty of any true intelligence, today's generative AI is bursting with potential. It doesn't merely mimic; it generates, learns, and evolves. It amplifies human thought, much like how a bicycle amplifies our physical prowess, allowing us to traverse distances unthinkable on foot. This is the modern ghost—not a consciousness, but a tool, profoundly useful to humanity.

Unexpected Outcomes

For 84 years, the Turk blew the minds of the smartest thinkers in the world. They believed it was possible to create a machine that could beat the best humans in chess.

Deep Blue famously beat Garry Kasparov, the reigning chess champion, in 1997, and it has been downhill for human champions ever since. AlphaGo went on to beat the best in the world at Go, Watson destroyed Ken Jennings on Jeopardy, and the domains where humans are competitive with computers continues to become smaller.

So, these smart folks were fooled by the Turk back then, but they weren’t wrong to imagine that it might be possible to construct an automation that would win at chess. What else did seeing this false miracle for nearly a century lead to?

To draw some actionable conclusions from the lessons from history, I’m handing the keyboard over to

Devansh

, who writes

Artificial Intelligence Made Simple

. He and I have enjoyed discussing ideas generating in both his and my writing, and Devansh also trains jiu jitsu for MMA!

Further, this piece was his original suggestion, and I really loved the idea. Check out his stuff when you’re done here.

Here’s Devansh:

To me what's interesting about the Turk is the elegance of the ruse. A man sat inside the Turk. People would inspect the Turk before every game. And herein lies the brilliance of the con. In a Team Rocket level of deception, the Turk had a rolling seat that could be used to conceal the players. People would open the box, while the player was hidden, and assume that all was good. By directing everyone's attention to the empty part of the box, attention was misdirected from the possibility of a human hidden by the seat. By actively guiding and selectively picking what the people inspected, the Turk was able to able to provide an air of legitimacy. In a beautiful twist, the inspection process became part of the con itself. 

This makes the Turk the forefather of the AI Industry in more ways than one. Much of the marketing and hype we see around AI is based on cherry-picking samples and creating a buzz over rigorous testing. Benchmarks become another marketing tool, and State of the Art performance is almost meaningless because of all the exceptions and caveats. Worse still, well-meaning regulations around these systems (such as the AI executive order), miss the mark entirely because they get too caught up in the glimmering aesthetics to look into the ugly details. 

Everything about the Turk was a beautiful performance- from the usage of a 'Turk' in a Europe wary of the Ottomans, to the sham inspection process. And in that way, the Turk was truly the predecessor of the AI Industry. 

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How far will people go to convince other folks that they’ve figured out the profound lessons of the universe? Maybe a better question is: how much do we want to be fooled, deep down inside?

Our tendency to wonder is simultaneously a great vulnerability, and perhaps our greatest strength. We now have the ability to destroy ourselves many times over, and yet we’ve also gained the ability to go to the moon and back, and to communicate across the world in an instant, to anyone with an internet connection.

The onlookers of yesteryear, with eyes wide in amazement at the Turk's prowess, mirror our own enchantment with today's digital marvels. The Turk's clever subterfuge, a mechanical illusion of intellect, paved the way for genuine breakthroughs where machines now outmatch human minds in realms we once deemed untouchable.

As we reflect upon the Mechanical Turk of the past, it becomes a mirror reflecting our current technological illusions. Just as the Turk's operators manipulated its movements, today's digital 'Turks' are often shrouded in a mystique of artificial intelligence, manipulating our perceptions of what machines can do.

Are we truly witnessing the dawn of intelligent machines, or are we being deceived by a modern spectacle, a sophisticated veneer of algorithmic mimicry? It behooves us to peel back this layer of modern marvel to scrutinize what lies beneath, lest we fall prey to the same old tricks dressed in new, digital garb.

Think back to the enraptured crowd whose rapt attention the Mechanical Turk held, and consider what sorts of contraptions might be more smoke than fire today. What sorts of Mechanical Turks are out there today? Is artificial general intelligence one of them, or is it something that’s inevitable?

Let us know what you think!