The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. When Covid-19 sent people home in early 2020, the computer scientist Tom Zahavy rediscovered chess. He had played as a kid and had ...

It took about 50 years for computers to eviscerate humans in the venerable game of chess. A standard smartphone can now play the kind of moves that make a grandmaster’s head spin. But one artificial ...

Demis Hassabis is the CEO of Google DeepMind. As a child, Hassabis became a chess champion, competing in international tournaments. Hassabis credits chess with leading to an interest in programming ...

A few weeks ago, a group of researchers from Google’s artificial-intelligence subsidiary, DeepMind, published a paper in the journal Science that described an A.I. for playing games. While their ...