To the Best of Our Knowledge: Alan Turing

In this hour, Alan Turing was only 41 when he committed suicide. He had already laid the foundations for the computer and artificial intelligence. As a codebreaker working with British intelligence, he helped save the Allies from the Nazis. Filmmaker Patrick Sammon's new docu-drama, Codebreaker, tells the story of Alan Turing's brilliant life and of his persecution by British authorities for the crime of being homosexual.

Next, in the mid-1930's, Alan Turing made the revolutionary discovery that launched the digital age. He proved that information can be translated and communicated using nothing but a series of ones and zeroes. Every digital device we know today uses Turing's mathematics. And that was just the first of Turing's intellectual achievements. Biographer Andrew Hodges explains Turing's genius.

Then, computer programmer Mohan Embar describes competing for -- and winning! -- the 2012 Loebner Prize for Artificial Intelligence. His chat bot, Chip Vivant, was the most "human computer" of the year. But it still couldn't pass the Turing Test.

After that, British writer Alan Garner shares his memories of his friend and running partner, Alan Turing.

Following that, Brian Christian is the author of The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive. He tells us why he decided to compete in the annual Turing competition -- for the Loebner Prize -- not for the most human computer, but for the "most human human."

Next, in Turing's Cathedral, George Dyson tells the "creation story" of the computer age -- the story of the birth of the first computers and the first address matrix. Dyson grew up playing in the backyard of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton -- where his parents, and a team of brilliant engineers and mathematicians, developed the prototype of the computers we still use today.

And finally, novelist Neal Stephenson writes epic, thousand-page ...