He made contributions of crucial international significance in three distinct fields of endeavour. During the second world war, he developed code-breaking techniques which led to effective automatic deciphering of German high-level ciphers. In the 1950s, he worked with Anne on pioneering techniques which were fundamental in the development of in vitro fertilisation. Donald subsequently became one of the founders of the field of artificial intelligence, an area to which he devoted the remainder of his academic career. It was within this field that I came to know Donald as an inspirational supervisor of my PhD at Edinburgh - not only insightful, forceful and even heroic, but possessing a wicked sense of humour.

One day in the not-too-distant future, you will be able to buy a chair from Ikea, bring it home and watch it assemble itself in front of your eyes. In this same future world, if you are diagnosed with cancer, you might be injected with nano-robots that will track down and selectively kill the cancerous cells. You will feel nothing but mildly feverish in the process. Sentient chairs and cancer-fighting robots might sound like the stuff of science fiction, but these are two very real projects that Carlos Olguin is working on in his role as the director of the Bio/Nano/Programmable Matter Group at software giant Autodesk. Founded as a quirky Californian startup in the 1980s, the company has gone from producing AutoCAD design software for 8-bit PCs to speculating on the future of programmable lifeforms. "We are now looking at life as a design space," says Olguin when we meet in London, in between his hectic tour of synthetic biology research outfits.

Anant Agarwal is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and president of edX, a leading provider of massive open online courses, known as Moocs. Created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, edX is a non-profit, "open-source" organisation. Everybody should have access to a high-quality education. At edX we are applying technology to improve education in quality, scale and accessibility. We have about 1m people enrolled in edX.

Also known as chatbots, these are computer programs, web-based or not, with which one can hold a conversation. Some simulate artificial intelligence and many are humorous in nature. Focuses on creating genuine Artificial Intelligence - the technology that enables machines to converse with humans in natural language. Based on a groundbreaking approach, Ai's technology will pass the Turing Test for machine intelligence by 2011. Hobby project written in Visual Basic 6.0 by M.F.

Every year the Loebner Prize for artificial intelligence is awarded to the chatbot software able to converse most like a human. It is a version of the Turing test, proposed in 1950 by Alan Turing. A program passes when a human judge cannot tell that they are talking to a machine. No machine has yet passed. But the winner of the Loebner Prize at the weekend – Elbot, brainchild of Fred Roberts at Artificial Solutions in Germany – came close, according to the contest's rather generous rules.

The field of artificial intelligence has been accompanied by a vigorous debate essentially from its very beginnings. Alan Turing addressed the issue of machine intelligence in 1950 in what is probably his most well known paper, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," where he proposed the "Imitation Game," now known as the "Turing Test," as an operational definition for machine intelligence. The main focus of the paper is the possibility of machine intelligence. Turing carefully analyzed and rebutted arguments against machine intelligence and stated, "I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted." This view was later strenuously contested by philosophers such as Hubert Dreyfus and John Searle, who argued against the possibility of intelligent machines.

By 2020, our day-to-day lives, relationships and even what to have for dinner could be controlled and run by digital versions of ourselves. According to futurist John Smart, within the next six years many of us could have so-called'digital twins' that schedule our appointments and even have conversations with others on our behalf. And they could one day console loved ones after we die by mimicking our voice, emotions, mannerisms and thoughts. According to futurist John Smart, within the next five years many of us could have so-called'digital twins' (illustrated) that schedule appointments, make decisions and have conversations with others on our behalf. Mr Smart, founder of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, made the comments during an interview with Business Insider.

Researchers have revealed exactly what mobile phone users type most - and say that'I love you' is the most popular three word sentence. The team at SwiftKey analysed web data along with anonymous data from their hugely popular alternative keyboard, which has been downloaded to more than 100 million devices, and also found phone users are extremely polite. The single most commonly used one word sentence in English is'thanks' and the most popular two word phrase is'thank you'. What we REALLY type: The single most commonly used one word sentence in English is'thanks' and the most popular two word phrase is'thank you', according to mobile keyboard firm SwiftKey The firm has created alternative keyboard which are among the most download android apps, and recently released a version for Apple handsets. They use a machine learning algorithm to predict what a user will type, constantly refining its ability as it learns how users type.

Pioneer of artificial intelligence, mathematician, and avid pianist Marvin Minsky died Sunday, Jan. 24. News of his death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. With great great sadness, I have to report that Marvin Minsky died last night. The world has lost one of its greatest minds in science. Dr. Minsky's formal education was in the field of mathematics, earning his undergraduate from Harvard in 1950 and his PhD in 1954.

February is Black History Month. In celebration of the contributions that African-Americans have made to science, we talked to three black scientists who are making history today with their groundbreaking work. Determination and passion are necessary for success in science, say James McLurkin, Martin Culpepper, and Hakeem Oluseyi. As children, they had something in common: They loved to figure out how things work. These three men also had determination, as well as strong support from their families and from teachers who believed in them.