In this entertaining lecture Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist Richard Feynman goes over the basics of computational machines. He discusses how they file information, how they handle data, how they use their information in allocated processing in a finite amount of time to solve problems and how they actually compute values of interest to human beings.
He also touches on the capacity of computers to match human intelligence, an eerie foreshadowing to the burgeoning world of AI we inhabit today.
The question of whether physics will play a role in reaching the next level of Artificial Intelligence remains open. Quantum computing seems like the inevitable corollary, but in terms of technology and algorithmic development this path remains in its infancy.
