Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science: Fundamental Science at Bocconi

IN A RAI TRE BROADCAST, RICCARDO ZECCHINA, A PHYSICIST WHO TEACHES COMPUTER SCIENCE, RECOUNTS HIS DAY AS A RESEARCHER AND ILLUSTRATES THE UNIVERSITY'S GROWING INTEREST IN DATA SCIENCE AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

For a machine, recognizing a chair can be more difficult than beating the world chess champion. Deep Blue, an IBM supercomputer, defeated Garry Kasparov as early as 1996, while only the advent of artificial intelligence made possible for a machine to recognize a chair with the same accuracy as humans. In an episode of Memex - Vita da Ricercatore, aired on Rai Tre, Riccardo Zecchina, a theoretical physicist who teaches Computer Science at Bocconi, tells the journalist Davide Coero Borga about the evolution of the discipline and the functioning of artificial intelligence.
 
We discover that the result of Deep Blue was achieved thanks to the brute force of computing power, while today artificial intelligences "learn" to play chess by playing numerous games with other computers and are able to develop strategies that lovers of the game would call creative.
 
During the broadcast, Prof. Zecchina presents the group of young researchers in fundamental sciences such as Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science that coagulated around him at Bocconi, while Fabio Maccheroni, who studies our decision-making mechanisms, explains in a fun way what research in this field consists of.

The broadcast (in Italian)
 

by Fabio Todesco