Turing's 1950s letter predicted a new job: converting problems for computers
daveholtz · x · 2026-09-05
Economist John Horton shares a letter from Alan Turing to a schoolmaster asking about career prospects for math-inclined pupils. Turing predicted that computers like the ACE would create demand for people 'required to convert problems into a form which can be understood by the machine' — an early vision of what became programming and, today, prompt engineering. A striking historical footnote to debates on whether AI creates new jobs.
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