Turing Test success marks milestone in computing history

The 65 year-old iconic Turing Test was passed for the very first time by supercomputer Eugene Goostman during Turing Test 2014 held at the renowned Royal Society in London on Saturday.

'Eugene', a computer programme that simulates a 13 year old boy, was developed in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The development team includes Eugene's creator Vladimir Veselov, who was born in Russia and now lives in the United States, and Ukrainian born Eugene Demchenko who now lives in Russia.

The Turing Test is based on 20th century mathematician and code-breaker Turing's 1950 famous question and answer game, 'Can Machines Think?'. The experiment investigates whether people can detect if they are talking to machines or humans. The event is particularly poignant as it took place on the 60th anniversary of Turing's death, nearly six months after he was given a posthumous royal pardon.

If a computer is mistaken for a human more than 30% of the time during a series of five minute keyboard conversations it passes the test. No computer has ever achieved this, until now. Eugene managed to convince 33% of the human judges that it was human.

This historic event was organised by the University's School of Systems Engineering in partnership with RoboLaw, an EU-funded organisation examining the regulation of emerging robotic technologies.

Read more from source article: Science daily

Computers - In Brief..

Logic Gates - Introduction

The following Truth Table compares the logical functions of the 2-input logic gates:

Inputs		Truth Table Outputs for each Gate
A	B	AND	NAND	OR	NOR	EX-OR	EX-NOR
0	0	0	1	0	1	0	1
0	1	0	1	1	0	1	0
1	0	0	1	1	0	1	0
1	1	1	0	1	0	0	1

The following table gives a list of the common logic functions and their equivalent Boolean notation:

Logic Function	Boolean Notation
AND	A.B
OR	A+B
NOT	A
NAND	A.B
NOR	A+B
EX-OR	(A.B) + (A.B) or A⊕B
EX-NOR	(A.B) +  or A ⊕ B

Know: How to design a logic circuit using Truth Table

History of Computers

'Abacus' was the earliest known device to record computations. It dates back to ancient times and was invented by the Chinese. Ten beads were strung onto wires attached to a frame. Addition and subtraction were read from the final positions of the beads. It was considered the first manual tool used in calculating answers to problems that provided information and in a primitive way storing the results.

First Generation Computers (1940s – 1950s):

First electronic computers used vacuum tubes, and they were huge and complex. The first general purpose electronic computer was the ENIAC. It took up 167 square meters, weighed 27 tons, and consuming 150 kilowatts of power. It used thousands of vacuum tubes, crystal diodes, relays, resistors, and capacitors.

The first non-general purpose computer was ABC (Atanasoff–Berry Computer), and other similar computers of this era included german Z3, ten British Colossus computers, LEO, Harvard Mark I, and UNIVAC.

Second Generation Computers (1955 – 1960):

The second generation of computers were built using transistors, which consumed far less power, produced far less heat, and were much smaller compared to the first generation, albeit still big by today’s standards.

The first transistor computer was created at the University of Manchester in 1953. The most popular of transistor computers was IBM 1401. IBM also created the first disk drive in 1956, the IBM 350 RAMAC.

Third Generation Computers (1960s):

 The invention of the integrated circuits (ICs), also known as microchips (made by integrating a large number of transistors), paved the way for computers as we know them today. They were much smaller, and cheaper than first and second generation of computers.

Fourth Generation Computers (1971 – present):

First microchips-based central processing units consisted of multiple microchips for different CPU components. The drive for ever greater integration and miniaturization led towards single-chip CPUs, where all of the necessary CPU components were put onto a single microchip, called a Microprocessor. The first single-chip CPU, or a microprocessor, was Intel 4004.

The advent of the microprocessor spawned the evolution of the microcomputers, the kind that would eventually become personal computers that we are familiar with today.

For timeline, Visit:

http://www.history-timelines.org.uk/events-timelines/07-computer-history-timeline.htm