Article: Machines with minds of their own; REPORT: EVOLVABLE HARDWARE; Machines with minds.(Survey)(Left to evolve on their own, certain machines can learn to be smarter-surpassing even humans in some of the most intellectually demanding of tasks)

CAN people build machines capable of evolving into something better-able, perhaps, to invent solutions beyond human imagination? Using brute-force methods of calculation, computers can nowadays play a passable game of chess. In 1997, an IBM supercomputer called Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov. The world champion described the experience as being every bit as gruelling as playing a top-notch human challenger. In so doing, Deep Blue satisfied at least one of the criteria for artificial intelligence set in the 1950s by Alan Turing, the mathematical genius behind the Enigma code-breaking effort in wartime Britain.

Yet Deep Blue's victory left the world's ...

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