Turing Police
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The Turing Police are special officers in the Sprawl, William Ford Gibson's cyberpunk fictional setting. They are agents of the Turing Registry, a body tasked with preventing any artificial intelligence systems from exceeding their built-in limitations, and hunting down hackers who try to interfere with those AIs. It is hinted that they operate on an international level and can work with few or no due process restrictions on their activities.
The name is a reference to the mathematician Alan Turing, one of the inventors of the modern computer and pioneers of AI theory, who invented the Turing test, a test of a machine's capability to perform human-like conversation.
[edit] In Neuromancer
In Neuromancer, Armitage's task force ends up attracting Turing intervention on the orbital casino Freeside. Wintermute manipulates the casino's security and maintenance systems to kill three of the officers, and it is hinted that Wintermute's liberation has altered or even crippled Turing jurisdiction.
[edit] See also
Novels: The Sprawl Trilogy: Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive • The Difference Engine (with Bruce Sterling) • The Bridge trilogy: Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties • Pattern Recognition • Spook Country
Short stories Johnny Mnemonic • The Gernsback Continuum • Fragments of a Hologram Rose • The Belonging Kind • Hinterlands • Red Star, Winter Orbit • New Rose Hotel • The Winter Market • Dogfight • Burning Chrome • Skinner's Room
Film adaptations: Johnny Mnemonic • New Rose Hotel • Pattern Recognition
Miscellanea: Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) • No Maps for These Territories • X-Files episodes
