alt Hacker NewsThat Hexapawn article was my first introduction to AI as a kid, though I never actually built it.
Found it in a "Reader's Digest Young Persons annual" which my dad got when he was a kid in the 60s. I still have that.
The original article from Scientific American: https://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/idocs/GardnerHexapawn.pd...
You're probably talking about the same book I had then. I also remember it started off with a Mercury astronaut story, also had the story of Shackleton's Arctic voyage, and a two-page game board that was about trying to drive a car around China.