My recommendation would be to go back to the original sources. Hardly anyone (on Medium or Techcrunch, that is) would know about Arthur Samuel's checkers playin

My recommendation would be to go back to the original sources. Hardly anyone (on Medium or Techcrunch, that is) would know about Arthur Samuel's checkers playing program. His paper, "Some Studies in Machine Learning Using the Game of Checkers", can be found in the compilation, "Computers and Thought" by Feigenbaum and Feldman. Another good resource is the three-volume set, "The Handbook of Artificial Intelligence ", also by Feigenbaum. It's a very thorough catalog of programs developed in the 60s and 70s that illustrate various techniques used in AI programs. In the words of Alan Kay, "the past is vast".