“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.”
— Alan Turing
Final line of 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence' (1950), published in the journal Mind. Turing's foundational paper on artificial intelligence.
In 1939 I arrived at Bletchley Park. German submarines were sinking convoys in the Atlantic. They gave me a problem no one had solved: break Enigma, a machine with 159 quintillion possible settings every day. I did not know how. Nobody did. But I could see the next step. I built the Bombe. Then the next step. By 1941 we were reading their messages. You do not need to see the whole road. You need to see the next step. Take it. Then look again.