How it all began

My first experiences understanding that AI might be available for human interaction in the future formed when I was 7-10 years old.

The year was 1991.

I was fortunate enough to have a Commodore 64 8 bit computer when I was about to start elementary school.

At first I though of using the for games but I discovered that you can use it as a calculator and make it print stuff, create loops, use oneliners like:

10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10

and create pictures with my younger brother using spacebar and background color change - a very interesting pixel art my brother particularly excelled at.

One of the happy mishaps that led me to understand and research more was an accidental malfunction of Commodore 64’s datasette.

I couldn’t play games - not even save and load programs, but:

• I could play Colossus chess 4 against the computer - from a cartridge that came with the Commodore - which was my first glimps into the artificial “mind”

• I could still write BASIC programs from a Commodore 64 instruction manual - so I started to code.

I started to develop a knack for imagining and in a sense predicting the future of technology and human interaction with it.

“The smarter I would play against Colossus chess - the smarter it would get.”

This was not really true, but the chess program was quite advanced so it was a philosophical reflection of a kid playing against an advanced chess program at the time.

I have to metion that author of Colossus chess 4 is Martin P. Bryant and that it was originally published by CDS Software in 1985. - a 40 year anniversary is this year.