Jefferson’s paper on the differences between electronic computers and the human brain inspired Alan Turing to respond with his famous paper, “Computing machinery and intelligence” (1950), which introduced the “Turing Test” of a machine’s ability to exhibit human-like intelligence. Jefferson was aware of the Manchester “Baby” stored-program computer and likely knew of the work of Turing, who became chief programmer on the Manchester computer project in September 1948. In a later postscript to his paper, written in 1960, Jefferson noted that 

"Mine was the first paper by a neurologist faced with the new electronic computing machines, for which much greater identification with the action of the brain was claimed than was in my opinion justifiable. It was a protest against jumping to conclusions . . . My friend and most ingenious mathematical colleague, the late Alan Turing, F.R.S., believed passionately that the computing machines had all but solved at once the intricacies of the mind-brain problem. He said that although a machine might not write a sonnet that I could understand, he was sure that it would write one soon that another computer might enjoy!"