The Turing Test

A.M. Turing published "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" (1950). -

The paper also introduces the Turing test. This is where one out of two participants is replaced by a computer and observer tries to work out which is the computer. If the computer can not be picked, then for all intent and purposes, it is intelligent.

Prolog

Prolog was designed in 1973 by Alain Colmerauer to implement the idea in the 1970’s of programming in logic. It uses symbolic manipulation to create a flexible yet powerful programming frame work. It allows the uses of facts and rules.

parent(bill,sam).
parent(sam,tom).
grandparent(X,Z) :- parent(X,Y),parent(Y,Z).
? – grandparent(X,tom)

Prolog can workout from the above example that bill is the grandparent of tom.

Deep Blue

In 1997 the chess playing super computer ‘Deep Blue’ was put online. After 2 other attempts, Garry Kasparov (The current world chess master) was beaten by Deep Blue. Deep blue operated at One Trillion operations per second.

In total, IBM spent millions of dollars and five years building the world's most powerful chess playing computer. On their website they say that they did this “merely as a benchmarking process” and that they are “taking some of the lessons [they] learned from building this system and applying it to other complex and difficult problems that require a tremendous amount of computational power”.