Alan Turing is one of the world’s best-known mathematicians, and probably the best known in the past century. This is partly for his work on cracking German codes in World War II, and partly for his arrest…
Some computer scientists at Rutgers University in New Jersey have written a computer programme that finds connections between paintings and can even discover influences between artists, they claim. This…
Back in January 2012, the now-departed education secretary Michael Gove said, “ICT in schools is a mess”. He went on to argue that what was needed was a rigorous computer science curriculum. Now, from…
After years of trying, it looks like a chatbot has finally passed the Turing Test. Eugene Goostman, a computer program posing as a 13-year old Ukrainian boy, managed to convince 33% of judges that he was…
Faced with uncertain times, Microsoft has named Satya Nadella as its new CEO. His appointment follows months of speculation over who would replace longstanding leader Steve Ballmer, who retired last year…
Computing is an important subject, but it is only one of many that schools have to teach, and few would argue that it is more important than English, maths, or science. But as a high-profile debate continues…
All eyes turned to London this week, as Google announced its latest acquisition in the form of DeepMind, a company that specialises in artificial intelligence technologies. The £400m pricetag paid by Google…
Frederick Sanger, who died recently at the age of 95, won two Nobel prizes in chemistry for his methods for sequencing proteins and DNA. Proteins were of more direct interest to many people because many…
Two recent incidents have shown that you no longer need to risk life and limb to rob a bank. In September, an attempted cyber-robbery at a London branch of Santander was stopped in its tracks and shortly…
Researchers in Japan have used the powerful K computer, one of the world’s fastest supercomputers, to simulate the complex neural structure of our brain. Using a popular suite of neuron simulating software…