€29.90 Computers can make the world a better place
Frederic Friedel was a science journalist when he co-founded ChessBase in 1987 in Hamburg. It s still the headquarters of the German firm, which has become the world leader in chess software. His partner, the programmer Matthias Wüllenweber, created the architecture of the first professional chess database in history: ChessBase 1.0. The iconic Fritz was born in 1991, developed under DOS by Frans Morsch and brought to light under Windows by Mathias Feist.
The guru of ChessBase is now 75 years old. He believes that Artificial Intelligence can be the key to the future, so that humans can live better on earth. He is as optimistic and enthusiastic as ever. He expresses his hopes, but also his fears and doubts. How will we coexist with computers of a new type when they have become as intelligent as we are, and even more so?
In 2020, the year of COVID-19, the greatest scientific discovery is a vaccine.
In a year that was all about COVID-19 and the losses it incurred lives, incomes, personal freedom, physical contact and simple handshakes the development of vaccines for the deadly pandemic stands out as a top scientific and technology discovery of 2020.
By December, several researchers had announced positive results from trials, in record time. The quickest turnaround for a vaccine up to then was in the 1960s, when developers went from viral sampling to approval in four years for mumps immunization, the journal Nature reported.
Early in the month in Britain and the U.S., shipments began of coronavirus vaccine vials made by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the German firm BioNTech. On Dec. 18, the Food and Drug Administration gave emergency approval to Moderna s vaccine for people 18 and over. In a public show of support, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation s top epidemiologist, got the Moderna imm