Blondie24

I recently finished reading the book Blondie24. It's all about the creation of a computer program that learns how to achieve Master-class skill at the game of checkers without having to be programmed without any specifics of the rules. This represents a radical departure from the more traditional approaches to game-playing programs, such as Deep Blue from IBM, which rely on a lot of human-supplied rule logic. Blondie24, whose name suggested to opponents that she was a Californian surfer-girl, used a sophisticated combination of neural networks and genetic algorithms to learn rules and strategies over time. I found the book particularly interesting for two reasons. First, I used to teach both of these subjects while I was at the University of Texas of Dallas, and I was one of the early members of MIND (Metroplex Institute for Neural Dynamics). Second, it's an example from the field of computer science provides support for the theory of evolution.