The First AI Program to Play Chess Was Written by a Student in 1951 - Apparently.
In 1951, a 23-year-old computer science student named Arthur Samuel created the first AI program to play chess. Samuel, who worked at IBM, developed the program using a combination of algorithms and game tree search. The program, called "Checkers," was able to play a decent game of checkers, but Samuel soon moved on to developing a chess-playing program, which he called "IBM Chess." This early AI program laid the foundation for the development of chess-playing computers and ultimately led to the creation of IBM's Deep Blue, which defeated a world chess champion in 1997.