Google Lifts the Turing Award into Nobel Territory

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/google-lifts-the-turing-award-into-nobel-territory/?ref=technology

by gordon_freeman • 12 years ago

266 65 12 years ago

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

nacs• 12 years ago

Props to Google for stepping up where Intel left off.

Sounds like a good way for Google to find some big-name (post-award), PR-worthy, highly-qualified new employees.

waterlesscloud2• 12 years ago

These awards are given to well-known people fairly late in their careers, by design.

jeffreyrogers2• 12 years ago

Ken Thompson had already invented UNIX and C when Google hired him.

larrys• 12 years ago

Compare what this is costing google to what an advertisement on the Superbowl costs (much much more).

Google will get a tremendous amount of valuable publicity for their $1,000,000 per year. It's a bargain regardless of anything else that will come out of doing this.

gordon_freeman• 12 years ago

also bargain in attracting some of the best AI scientists to work on Search, machine learning, [X], etc projects of its own.

duaneb2• 12 years ago

If this is a recruitment move, it's weak. It's more about the brand PR, I suspect.

NegativeK2• 12 years ago

Strange; I rarely think of the cash award with the Nobel prize.

duaneb2• 12 years ago

What do YOU imagine would push the turing award closer to the nobel prize?

waterlesscloud2• 12 years ago

Prestige, which you can only partially buy.

asdfologist• 12 years ago

Call it a Nobel prize.

mentat• 12 years ago

A big hunk of gold so you can tell stories like: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/10/10/...

greendestiny• 12 years ago

Well a Nobel prize is awarded for the significance of the breakthrough, and the Turing award is more for the significance of the person. I think it would be good to have an award in computer science that celebrated and validated breakthroughs (though it doesn't have to be the Turing award).

mturmon2• 12 years ago

It's unclear from the article whether Google endowed the award to a sustainable level of $1M/year, or is just supporting it at that level for now. Clearly an endowment would make a stronger statement.

There's a suggestion that it was not an endowment, because of the note that Intel stepped away from sponsorship.

gwern2• 12 years ago

The official press release doesn't mention anything about an endowment either: http://amturing.acm.org/prize-news.cfm

(In the current environment, to get interest of $1m a year would require a very large endowment - something like $30m+ - and you'd think that would be mentioned prominently.)

jeffdavis• 12 years ago

That's not huge compared to their other contributions. Look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google.org

kulkarnic• 12 years ago

The prize money is definitely a great idea. It'll probably be seen as a rich-company-PR move, but in hindsight, I think we'll see it as a sign of the times.

Computer science seems to be going through a similar transformation as Palo Alto. Just as Palo Alto went from a place where people were modest about their wealth to one where vanity license-plates decorate Teslas at the curb-side, computer scientists seem to have transformed in public imagination from quiet nerds to celebrity saviors of mankind. I'm not sure the image is well-deserved, but so it goes.

acabal• 12 years ago

Well to be fair, even the Nobel prize is a sort of PR move, though a posthumous one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel#Nobel_Prizes

vinceguidry2• 12 years ago

Everything large organizations and ultra-rich people do is PR.

sanderjd• 12 years ago

I don't think that transformation has really happened in the public imagination at large, but perhaps it has in the bay area. Sure, the public imagination is somewhat taken with some of technology's successful figures, like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin and Larry Page, but successful business-people have always been admired, regardless of whether their background is in finance or marketing or management or engineering or programming.

j2kun• 12 years ago

This is especially considering how every Turing award winner is recognized for extremely technical contributions. There's no way the general public will think of Richard Karp or Stephen Cook as a hero because they won't even be able to say anything resembling what they did.

jeffreyrogers2• 12 years ago

computer scientists seem to have transformed in public imagination from quiet nerds to celebrity saviors of mankind.

The people I'm around seem to still view programmers/computer scientists as awkward nerds, but now they're awkward nerds who you can make money off of.

jacquesm2• 12 years ago

Does that mean you get it before you achieve something?

tn13• 12 years ago

I really wish we could come up with "community awards" where certain people with certain accomplishment could pool in their own money to honor a researcher who is otherwise not so much known in main stream media. For example Steve Jobs is a well known name but Denis Richie isn't.

sampo2• 12 years ago

Steve Jobs is a well known name but Denis Richie isn't.

Oh, the irony.

zimpenfish2• 12 years ago

Not really - Steve Jobs sold devices to hundreds of millions of people, helped spin off possibly -the- premium movie studio, and regularly appeared on stage in high profile events watched by millions.

Also had an easier name to spell.

Chinjut• 12 years ago

FTFY: "Stephen Job"

bramgg• 12 years ago

Steven Jobs

FTFY ;)

geoka9• 12 years ago

Dennis Ritchie.

facepalm• 12 years ago

Maybe like the awesome foundation? http://www.awesomefoundation.org/

merrua• 12 years ago

There used to be community credit awards. I once received one when I was younger, it was a lovely idea.

srcmap• 12 years ago

If I have google or Microsoft type money, I would setup Nobel price like $$$ for multiple developers who makes significant contributions to open source projects every year.

fijal• 12 years ago

If google recognizes you as an open source contributor who does something significant, you get couple hundred $$$ worth of credit in their store (I wish I were joking)

tonyplee• 12 years ago

Computer/software industrial is big and rich enough to have our own Nobel type Award for significant contributors to the Art, Design and Science of Computer/Software.

Good PR, karma, ego boost for everyone work in the fields.

Like "Academy of motion picture arts and sciences" - "Academy of Computer Sciences, Software and Design" All winners get A Golden Keyboard and $1 million real cash.

If I have choice, I would like to nominate:

    "Dennis Ritchie" - inventor of C language.   
    "Bill Joy" inventor of gdb.
    "Guido van Rossum" inventor of Python
    "Brendan Eich" inventor of Javascript. 
    "Linux" 
    "AT&T System V" 
    "BSD"

nopinsight2• 12 years ago

To lift its prestige, it would be nice to have the Queen of the UK and the Commonwealth to hand out the award too.

That'd be a one-up on the Nobel prize, which is handed out by the King of Sweden. Fittingly, Alan Turing was British (just as Alfred Nobel was Swedish). It would also serve as a vindication of Turing's honor.

audeyisaacs• 12 years ago

I don't think that would be appropriate for symbolic reasons related to his cause of death.

In my opinion, the award carrying Turing's name gives it a level of prestige greater than what royalty could provide.

hrasyid• 12 years ago

Why would the British royalty be a 'one up' compared to the Swedish one? ;)

taejo• 12 years ago

Elizabeth II is the queen of 16 countries. Carl XVI Gustav is king of one.

nl• 12 years ago

The Nobel prize is a Swedish (and Norwegian[1] award) so that makes sense.

The Turing award is organized by the ACM, an US-based non-profit. It has nothing to do with the UK, apart from being named by someone who was a hero for that country and then was persecuted until he committed suicide. He was only pardoned in 2013.

I think your idea is well intentioned but I'm not convinced it is appropriate.

[1] The Nobel Peace Prize of awarded by a Norwegian committee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Peace_Prize

balladeer• 12 years ago

It's depressing and disgusting to see people still consider royalty and aristocracy as "one up". So much for freedom, liberal thinking and equality.

For sanity's sake, at least give a thought about all the colonial history and the fact that Alan Turing was convicted for homosexual activity[0] and branded a security risk by the same "crown" and then issued a farcical royal pardon[1] in 2012.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Conviction_for_inde...

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/royal-pardon-for-ww2-code... --> "Dr Alan Turing has been given a posthumous pardon under the Royal Prerogative of Mercy by the Queen"

k-mcgrady• 12 years ago

Why should a monarch have anything to do with it? It would be good to see it be given out by someone who previously won the award, someone who has actually achieved something.

nopinsight2• 12 years ago

To be clear after having read several replies, I do not personally consider awards given by the aristocracy to be more prestigious. However, a lot of 'regular' people do.

The proposal above simply aims to leverage the brand recognition of the British Crown and its still considerable prestige among millions of people to bolster the award's position, since we're talking about competing with the Nobel. (If the Turing Award were in fact the Nobel Prize's equal, there would not be this many 'Computer Science's Nobel prize' used in the popular press.)

Current computer scientists of course do not really need this kind of endorsements, but if the aim is to attract more young bright minds to the field, it may help.

I am aware of the cause of Dr.Turing's death. It was not instigated by the British Crown, but by the government, which was prejudiced by the law of its time. The fact that there was effort to obtain the royal 'pardon' for him suggests that, at least in Britain, the monarch's prestige meant something.

In time, the award may well become prestigious enough that this is not useful anymore. Then, we could just ignore the tradition or even change the entity handing it out, perhaps to be an AI robot which passes the Turing test for the first time in history.

antirez• 12 years ago

My feeling is that the price should be split into two pieces: computer science and cryptography. However great to see the price raised to 1M.

marcosdumay• 12 years ago

An odd set of areas for a prize for math.

Google Lifts the Turing Award into Nobel Territory

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