Search Term: Alan Turing

Three Conversations with Computers

By Peter J Bentley
What better way to spend an afternoon than having a friendly chat? My three friends are online chatbots – Artificial Intelligence software designed to analyse my sentences and respond accordingly. All I do is visit a specific webpage, then type into a box in my Internet browser and they reply, just like chatting online to a human. These three (jabberwacky, iGod and ALICE) are some of the more advanced chatbots out there, the result of decades of research by computer scientists to try and achieve intelligence in a computer.

Flunkeys and lackeys two centuries ago

By Anatoly Liberman

In An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology, I called William L. Blackley’s 1869 book Word Gossip singularly uninformative, and I am sorry for that remark.

Elleke Boehmer’s seminal Colonial and Postcolonial Literature at 30

By Elleke Boehmer

May 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of Elleke Boehmer’s seminal text Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors, first published by OUP in 1995 with a second edition following a decade later. It remains a landmark publication in the field of colonial and postcolonial literature and beyond, read, studied, and taught the world over.

Bootless cats, curious idioms, and Kattegat

By Anatoly Liberman

Over the years, I have discussed the origin of quite a few animal names. Despite my inroads, most of them—from heifer to dog—remain problematic. Yet no word is more enigmatic than cat. Two names for cat dominate the world: either some variant of kat or miu ~ mau (Ancient Egyptian) ~ mao (Chinese).

How race shapes American Christian solidarities in Palestine [long read]

By Sara A. Williams and Roger Baumann

Since the October 7 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza, race and religion have loomed large in debates over appropriate solidarities linking the United States with Israel and Palestine, with the breakdown and reorientation of durable Black-Jewish U.S. civil rights alliances, mounting pressure coming from African American Christian clergy for a ceasefire in Gaza, and even organized Black clergy denunciations of U.S. military aid for the State of Israel as enabling “mass genocide.”

Of politicians as newsreaders and other curiosities of our brave new digital world

By Irini Katsirea

Few will have been surprised by Ofcom’s recent verdict that GB News broke due impartiality rules by featuring politicians like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Esther McVey as news presenters. However, the regulator’s decision to handle GB News with kid gloves by putting it on notice whilst refraining from imposing statutory sanctions raised an eyebrow or two.

When fame is not enough: Margaret Walker and the twentieth-century South

By Maryemma Graham

Maryemma Graham on writing “The House Where My Soul Lives: The Life of Margaret Walker”, the complete, authorized biography of America’s first award-winning Black writer.

The great gun conundrum [podcast]

By Steven Filippi and Meghan Schaffer

In this podcast episode, we discuss the history of the gun debate in the US with Robert J. Spitzer and how a reform of policing can deter gun violence with Philip J. Cook.

How sustainable is sustainability?

By Sarah Reed

In a recent Animal Frontiers article, we look at the larger picture of sustainability and the conversation that needs to happen when thinking about just one facet of an industry.

Carols for Choirs: the journey to press

By Sheet Music team

A history of the first ‘Carols for Choirs’ book, first published in 1961. Looking at materials from the OUP archive, we trace the journey from the initial idea through to its eventual release and unexpected success.

The reader observed: from Saint Jerome to Scott of the Antarctic

Across the centuries, in paintings and eventually in photography, one of the most common subjects for representation has been the reader.

The expanding horizons of national security and the China-US strategic competition—where are we heading?

By Joel Slawotsky

From Wall Street to Beijing Finance Street and beyond, one of the most important issues in international business and law is the changing conceptualization of national security. Corporations, businesses and investors are all affected by governmental decisions with respect to defending national security in the contexts of international investment, trade, and finance. The recent US […]

Should we be worried about robots taking our jobs? The answer depends on labor market institutions

By Jens Suedekum, Sebastian Findeisen, Wolfgang Dauth, and Nicole Woessner

Do new technologies, such as robots, destroy jobs and cause mass unemployment? Many current and past commentators have forcefully made this point in the public debate, but new research published in the Journal of the European Economic Association suggests that “technological mass unemployment” is indeed not something we should worry about.