Grandfather of the computer Alan Turing celebrated his 100th birthday this weekend — or at least he would have, had he not committed suicide in 1954 after being chemically castrated by England. (Sorry for the downer.) To celebrate the anniversary of Turing's birth, the University of Manchester took a chess-playing algorithm written by Turing in 1950 and put it to the test against Russian chess great Garry Kasparov.
Kasparov, who beat IBM's chess-playing monstrosities Deep Thought and Deep Blue in 1989 and 1996 respectively, predictably made quick work of Turing's program by defeating it in 16 moves. Still, Kasparov had kind words for Turing's program in a prepared statement. "I suppose you might call it primitive, but I would compare it to an early car — you might laugh at them but it is still an incredible achievement."
Turing is best known for his work on artificial intelligence and programming projects during World War II. It was Turing's work that led to the Allies cracking the German Enigma Machine, a tool used by the Nazis to encode military orders.
[The Register via Gizmodo]
This article was written by Fox Van Allen and originally appeared on Tecca
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