Marco Barnig, a renowned Luxembourgish telecommunications engineer and one of the country’s early innovators in artificial intelligence, has passed away at the age of 75, as reported by Luxemburger Wort on Friday morning. According to the obituary, Barnig died peacefully last Saturday, 11 July, in Canchy, France.
A lifelong technology enthusiast, Barnig earned his engineering degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. He later worked at Post Luxembourg, where he helped introduce new technologies within the organisation. Barnig was already experimenting with microprocessors in the 1970s and, among other achievements, built a machine that could play the game Mill against a human opponent, a project he once described to Wort as his first AI project.
After retiring, Barnig devoted much of his time to exploring artificial intelligence. He launched the KI-Léierbud initiative and published Luxembourg's first children's book written entirely by AI. Inspired largely by his five grandchildren, he created the book The Young Explorers ("Les Jeunes Explorateurs – Sur les Sentiers du Patrimoine UNESCO"), which invites readers to discover 100 UNESCO World Heritage sites. Barnig at the time explained that he wanted to leave his grandchildren a lasting memory for when he would no longer be there.
