Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, and A.I.

Come to Pioneer Hall, 73 Winburn Way, 4-6 PM Oct 11th, to witness an imaginary meeting of minds between Ada, the earliest computer programmer, and Alan, the father of modern computing, born almost exactly one hundred years later. Ada Lovelace was the only legitimate offspring of the celebrated Romantic poet, Lord Byron, who pursued her interest in the arcane arts of mathematics and logic. Alan Turing was aware of Ada's pioneering work, and laid the foundations for modern computing while cracking the "unbreakable" Nazi Enigma code, saving countless lives in WWII. Their dialog will focus on the promise and peril of computing particularly what Turing called the "Lady Lovelace Objection" that computers will never be able to think or become conscious.

Lady Lovelace will be portrayed by Victoria Law, former computer programmer, founder and former Director of the Ashland History Museum, and Alan Turing by Roy Kindell, Medford teacher, Humanist, President of the Jefferson Center Board, and a founding board member of the National Center for Science Education.