Thursday, August 27, 2026
11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Fort Tectoria, 777 Fort Street, Victoria, BC (open in Google Maps)
Free Event
Presented by VIATEC
Host: Steve Harris on LinkedIn
Featuring: Jonathan Schaeffer on LinkedIn
A lunchtime VIATEC Technology Track session on the long, tangled relationship between games and artificial intelligence. Jonathan Schaeffer of Synsira Software Solutions presents "Chips Challenging Champions: The Role of Games in AI R&D": how building programs to beat the best human players was one of AI's original grand challenges, why games are still the field's experimental test bed seventy years in, and how a surprising amount of everyday technology traces back to game research. Schaeffer spent four decades in computing science at the University of Alberta and built Chinook, the checkers program that became the first computer to hold a human world championship in any game. Hosted by Steve Harris at Fort Tectoria; coffee and tea served, with lunch available from the Fort Cafe on site. Doors at 11:30, talks begin at noon.
Anu's Take
Jonathan's checkers program did not just take the world title and a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, it went on to solve the game outright: perfect play is a draw, and that is that. Games have been AI's proving ground ever since, from Chinook to the chatbots writing everyone's emails, with a detour through Halo, whose AI sidekick Cortana later turned up on Microsoft's payroll. A lunch hour with the rare person who actually reached the end of a game, back to explain why the field keeps starting new ones.
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Published Tuesday, July 21, 2026 by Anu Jolliffe on LinkedIn