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.

Big news in AI this week: IBM's Watson project defeated "Jeopardy" champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in a three-night prime-time demo match. What does that win mean for computing, and more importantly, for humanity? That's the topic for this week's Reporters' Roundtable, and to discuss it we have two great guests, both with current books on the topics of computer vs. human competition. First up is Stephen Baker, author of Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything. Baker reported on the development of Watson from inside IBM headquarters to write this book.

Professor Karen Spärck Jones was one of the pioneers in information retrieval (IR) and natural language processing (NLP). She worked in these areas since the late 1950s and made major contributions to the understanding of information systems. Her international status as a researcher was recognised by the most prestigious awards in her field, the ACM SIGIR Salton Award, the American Society for Information Science and Technologys Award of Merit, the Association for Computational Linguistics Lifetime Achievement Award, the BCS Lovelace Medal, and the ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award, as well as by her election as a Fellow of the British Academy, of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, and as a European AI Fellow. Karen Spärck Jones started her research career at the Cambridge Language Research Unit in the late 1950s, working on the use of thesauri for language processing. At this time she collaborated with Roger Needham, whom she married in 1958.

Sargur N. Srihari, director of the University at Buffalo's Center of Excellence in Document Analysis and Recognition (CEDAR) and SUNY Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, has won the 2011 International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR) Outstanding Achievements award. He is being honored with the award for his outstanding and continued contributions to research and education in handwriting recognition and document analysis, and for his service to the community. Srihari recently traveled to Beijing to accept the award and serve as a keynote speaker at the conference, held bi-annually by the International Association for Pattern Recognition. His speech, entitled "Probabilistic Graphical Models in Machine Learning," focused on the design of computer programs that learn and are able to modify their behavior in an environment of constantly changing information. Without machine learning, many computers that deal with rapidly changing data would require constant reprogramming.

For someone who devised a computer chess program as an MIT undergraduate in the late 1950s, helped create the world's first video game, and held a leadership role with the World Wide Web Consortium, Alan Kotok got his start in an inauspicious fashion -- or so he was told. Subscribers to the Boston Globe get unlimited access to our archives.

Joseph Weizenbaum, an MIT professor and a pioneer in artificial intelligence whose famed computer program Eliza seemed to converse with humans in 1964, spent the rest of his life speaking out against substituting machines for human decision-making. "He was a critic of society and science and a true humanist who really touched people," said Peter Haas, a Vienna-based filmmaker who made the 2007 documentary "Weizenbaum. Mr. Weizenbaum, whose parents fled Nazi Germany when he was a boy, died March 5 in Groben, Germany, from cancer. One of his four daughters, Sharon Weizenbaum, recalled playing with the Eliza program in her father's study at her childhood home in Concord. "Eliza was something that was fun to fool around with," she said.