28 July 2026

The Man Who Imagined the Machine: Alan Turing’s Legacy Beyond the Enigma

By Kev Haines, Information Rights Manager

Most people know Alan Turing as “the codebreaker” who helped crack Nazi Germany’s Enigma cipher at Bletchley Park, shortening the Second World War by years.[1] But that’s the smallest part of why he matters today. Historians and computer scientists widely regard him as the father of theoretical computer science for exactly this reason.

Turing and the birth of artificial intelligence

Turing’s most quietly radical work was in the field of AI. He proposed the question “can machines think?” Could a machine hold a conversation convincing enough that a human couldn’t reliably tell they were talking to a machine at all? Turing’s ‘test’ directly anticipates the exact conversations we’re having about large language models today: what counts as understanding, whether behaviour is a sufficient stand-in for thought, and how much of intelligence is really about performance rather than thought. He was, by any reasonable definition, thinking about generative AI seventy years before it arrived.[2]

The dangers of data

Data protection and information governance professionals are all too familiar with the risks associated with processing special category data. Article 9 of the GDPR[3] exists largely because of the persecution of groups of people like Turing, a reminder that data is dangerous when used incorrectly, even by governments.

In January 1952, Turing reported a burglary at his home. In the course of the police investigation, he mentioned he was in a relationship with a man. Homosexuality was a criminal offence in Britain at the time, and Turing was charged, convicted, and given a choice between prison and a course of hormonal treatment; he chose the latter.[4] His security clearance was stripped, ending his ability to continue the government cryptography work he’d once been indispensable to. Turing was treated by the establishment he had helped save as something to be managed and contained, rather than a national asset.

Turing died in June 1954, aged 41, from cyanide poisoning. The inquest recorded a verdict of suicide, and a half-eaten apple was found by his bed, though there’s genuine historical debate about the precise circumstances of his death.[5]

Is a ‘pardon’ enough?

In 2013, Turing was granted a posthumous pardon[6] following a public campaign backed by scientists including Stephen Hawking. On paper, it looks like resolution; in practice, the reaction has been far more mixed than a tidy ending would suggest. Campaigners argued that pardoning Turing alone, while thousands of other men convicted under identical laws remained officially “guilty,” turned him into a special exception rather than a symbol of a wrong done to everyone. There’s also a more uncomfortable problem underneath it all: a pardon still implies there was something to forgive. Turing didn’t do anything wrong; the state did. Gordon Brown’s 2009 government apology put it more plainly, calling it a case where Turing “deserved so much better,”[7] and it’s hard to conclude that a pardon, however well-intentioned, fully closes that gap.

A role model for society today

In the decades since, Turing has become a genuine touchstone for the LGBTQI+ community and for anyone thinking about the cost of prejudice. His story carries particular weight because it isn’t abstract; it’s a literal account of one of the era’s greatest scientific minds being destroyed by exactly that discrimination. The Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science and AI, carries his name,[8] and his life has been dramatised on stage and in film for new generations who never lived through the world that persecuted him. For many, he represents proof that a person’s identity and their genius were never actually in conflict; it was only ever the law that insisted they were.

What might Turing make of AI and data protection today?

This is speculation, of course: Turing died a decade before the first data protection law was even drafted. But it’s tempting to imagine how he’d react to today’s AI landscape, and there are clues in how he actually thought.

It’s easy to picture Turing being fascinated by today’s large language models, testing what they can and can’t do, rigorously and without sentiment. He was also, by nature and by profession, someone deeply attuned to the power and danger of information, having spent the war years elbow-deep in the question of who gets to know what, and what happens when the wrong people find out. Turing’s own personal life would likely make him a firm supporter of today’s privacy laws and rights. Some speculate that tomorrow’s historians might look back at today’s social attitudes towards AI in the same way we now look back at Turing’s treatment and subsequent pardon.

If you would like to know more about AI in data protection and AI’s use in copyright, book your place on our AI and Data Protection Law and AI, Copyright and Cultural Heritage courses, or contact us at info@naomikorn.com.

We also have a range of services we offer to help you process sensitive data:Data Protection Services & Support | Naomi Korn Associates

[1] Historians estimate that the codebreaking carried out at Bletchley Park shortened the Second World War by roughly two to four years. See “Bletchley Park”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, britannica.com/place/Bletchley-Park.

[2] Turing set out this question in “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”, Mind, vol. 59, 1950, the paper in which what is now known as the Turing test was first proposed.

[3] Article 9 of the UK/EU GDPR designates data revealing sexual orientation, along with data such as health, racial or ethnic origin, and religious belief, as a “special category” requiring stricter conditions for lawful processing. See Art. 9 GDPR, gdpr-info.eu/art-9-gdpr/.

[4] Turing was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 and accepted a course of hormone treatment, commonly referred to as chemical castration, as an alternative to prison. See “Alan Turing law”, Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing_law.

[5] A post-mortem found cyanide poisoning as the cause of death, with a half-eaten apple beside the bed, though the apple itself was never tested. An inquest recorded a verdict of suicide, a finding some historians have since disputed. See “Alan Turing”, Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing.

[6] Turing received a posthumous royal pardon in 2013 following a public campaign. See “Alan Turing pardon campaign”, Science and Industry Museum, blog.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/alan-turing-pardon-campaign/.

[7] Then Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued this apology on behalf of the British government in September 2009, following a public petition. See “Gordon Brown issues apology for treatment of Alan Turing”, University of Manchester, manchester.ac.uk/about/news/gordon-brown-issues-apology-for-treatment-of-alan-turing/.

[8] The Alan Turing Institute, headquartered at the British Library in London, was established in 2015 as the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence. See “About us”, The Alan Turing Institute, turing.ac.uk/about-us.