Claude Shannon worked with signal to noise ratio. How does one cut out the noise/ interference and only get a good signal the “information” that we want? Shannon solves the signal to noise ratio problem by breaking the information into manageable pieces, by breaking the information down you receive less noise with the signal. Claude Shannon used Boolean algebra to translate logic into formula.After completing his PhD. from MIT he goes to work at Bell Labs where he meets, British mathematician, Alan Turing. During Shannon’s time at Bell Labs he writes, ” A Mathematical Theory of Communication” this explains how to best encode the information. Shannon is only concerned with the information not the meaning. In order to transmit the information efficiently with the least amount of disruption and noise you must get rid of the meaning. Later, Shannon and Harry Nyquist came up with the Nyquist- Shannon Sampling theory, allowing analog music to become digital music. You only need 2 pieces of information to recreate a sound wave. Music was turned in to numbers to a frequency then back to music.

Alan Turing is well known for decrypting Nazi codes and his work with machine intelligence. Turing developed the “Turing test” in order to tell if a machine is intelligent. He believed if a human could not tell that it was a machine or a human it would need to be considered intelligent. In opposition to this school of thought is John Searle. Searle believed that to be intelligent you must understand what you are doing, you must have intention. While Turing argues Searle point is moot because we only assume other’s intention but there is no way to know because we only know the outward self. Can you be intelligent with out intention? What if you make some great intelligent mathematical discovery by complete accident? If there is no intent are you still intelligent?