Mastering the Imitation Game
- Oliver Harflett
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Alan Turing proposed an idea in 1949 which he dubbed ‘the imitation game.’ The concept is beautifully simple. Can a computer imitate a person so well that we mistake the machine for being an actual person? A computer is said to pass the ‘Turing test’ if a person using it cannot tell whether it is controlled by a person or a machine. In other words, if the computer successfully ‘fools’ the user into thinking it’s intelligent, it passes ‘the imitation game.’ Turing specifically focused on the use of language in his theory, and his ‘imitation game’ centres around a person typing a conversation to a terminal in front of wall, behind which the person does not know whether a person or machine controls the conversation.
The Imitation Game was also the name for Turing’s biopic film of 2014. Even though I have mixed feelings on the film, the title is brilliant. It has so many meanings:
The Imitation Game is obviously a nod to Turing’s theory (now called the Turing test.)
It refers to the game of imitating a machine. In order to break the Nazi Enigma encryption machine, one has to think like a machine… or as Turing says in the film: “What if to defeat a machine, you need a machine?”
It also refers to Turing’s imitation of the norms and practices of his time - about how he has to conceal his homosexuality in a time and place it was illegal.
It refers to how his fellow codebreakers imitate each other - including a subplot where one fellow codebreaker is actually a Soviet agent (a true story - there were Russian spies at Bletchley Park in British intelligence.) The good spy ‘imitates’ the norms of circumstance, and imitates his fellow codebreakers.
The title also refers to Turing’s psychology. Alan Turing was likely neurodivergent and we see how his perception shapes his inner world, and how he tries to imitate people. His way of seeing people as “pink-coloured collections of sense data” is both his greatest gift and curse. He plays his own imitation game just to survive - some people accept him more than others, and we watch his slow, sad downfall despite his efforts.
If I may be so bold, I can especially relate to this last point. Whilst I don’t consider myself a mathematical or technical prodigy like Turing, I can relate to his struggle of imitation. Of always playing the imitation game.
I am neurodivergent and it shapes my life profoundly. I never truly understood my diagnosis until quite recently and until diving into embedded engineering (an arguably stereotypical interest.) Being an autistic adult is like navigating life with everything encoded in computer language you can’t compile or interpret. Where every message is encrypted in Nazi Enigma code. And you often don’t have the ability to decrypt the messages without huge effort. The person that cradles you like a baby can be planning your downfall; the worst rebuking can be tough love in disguise. The woman who smiles hates you; the woman who scowls loves you.
In the social world, things are rarely what they seem, or put more truthfully, they’re rarely what they should be. It’s no coincidence that divergent people sometimes gravitate towards computing. And it’s no coincidence that Turing was a pioneer of computer science. Why do I say this with such confidence?
Because machines speak in a language that many divergent minds understand. Machines are harsh, ruthless, merciless and sometimes brutal. They often don’t work. They often fight back in their stubborn ways. They can be hard to understand. But there’s a key difference between man and machine. When things go wrong in the social realm, there are usually no answers. No right or wrong - no concreteness - only a multitude of interpretations, of speaking ‘your truths’, of speaking past one another. It is a world of emotions, a sea that’s rough to sail. And it’s a sea that often leads to desolate places.
When things go wrong in the mechanical realm, the machine is always right. And you are wrong. There’s no room for interpretation. No room for your opinion. No speaking past one another. Only a problem to be solved, no matter how hard. It’s a world of rock-hard land, of induction, of deduction, of reduction and isolation. It is a different realm to the imitation game of the social realm. It is a fair game where imitation has no power. There may be no love, but there’s no room for heartbreak. The machine never lies.
Perhaps this love for the harshness of matter, of material, of science is why I’ve drifted towards electronics, computers and code. Because the world of people is not for me. And perhaps it is why I feel such a deep sympathy and admiration for Alan Turing. Because I understand a part of his psychology, and I admire how he let his fascination carry him to new heights of discovery. I believe he conceptualised the imitation game because he played the game himself. One does not need modern conceptions of autism to know how profoundly different one is. And I think he was wise enough to know this. For some, the gap between autistic and ‘typical’ is as large as the gap between man and machine. People have some odd views about who I am, and I often feel a profound incongruence between what people see and what I see in myself.
And it’s only the world of machines that has illuminated why. Because I’ve spent a lifetime of playing the imitation game. Not a machine imitating a person, but feeling like a person imitating a machine. Of imitating behaviours, norms and lies that people sucker up to. And though one can spend a lifetime playing the imitation game, it cannot last forever. Because like in Turing’s theory, the game ends when the truth is revealed - of who is behind the imitation game.
