ON TURING,ALAN ANTICIPATION OF CONNECTIONISM

It is not widely realised that Turing was probably the first person to consider building computing machines out of simple, neuron-like eleme nts connected together into networks in a largely random manner. Turin g called his networks 'unorganised machines'. By the application of wh at he described as 'appropriate interference, mimicking education' an unorganised machine can be trained to perform any task that a Turing m achine can carry out, provided the number of 'neurons' is sufficient. Turing proposed simulating both the behaviour of the network and the t raining process by means of a computer program. We outline Turing's co nnectionist project of 1948.