I bet Alan Turing who invented the Turing machine (and wrote the first ever chess playing program among many other things) as a thought experiment convenient for discussions on the theory of computation would have never thought that in the year 2010 a smart guy from Wisconsin would actually take the time to build one.… Read More »
Programming computers to play games has been central to Artificial Intelligence research since its early days back in the fifties. By now, most of us have heard of IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer defeating world chess champion Garry Kasparov in the game of chess and becoming the first ever computer to defeat man in this very… Read More »
IBM’s long time technology guru Frances Allen became the first woman to receive the highly prestigious Turing Award. The 74-year old Allen retired from IBM in 2002 but spent most of her life working on making computers easier to program. After completing a M.Sc. degree at the University of Michigan, Allen who worked as a… Read More »
In celebration of the 70th anniversary since Alan Turing’s seminal paper “On Computable Numbers” MIT held a public lecture featuring a debate between David Gelernter and Ray Kurzweil moderated by Rodney Brooks. The debate was about whether a machine could ever be conscious. First and most importantly, you can watch the debate online here. You… Read More »