Dartmouth workshop
In plain wordsA summer meeting of scientists at Dartmouth College in 1956, planned in a 1955 funding proposal that first used the phrase 'artificial intelligence'. Most histories treat it as the moment AI became a research field of its own.
An informal study period of about six to eight weeks at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, in the summer of 1956, formally the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. John McCarthyJohn McCarthy, prop. n.: The American computer scientist who coined the term 'artificial intelligence', invented the Lisp programming language and championed formal logic as the route to machine common sense., Marvin MinskyMarvin Minsky, prop. n.: An American AI pioneer who helped launch the field and MIT's AI laboratory, co-wrote a famous critique of early neural networks, and pictured the mind as a society of many simple parts., Nathaniel Rochester and Claude ShannonClaude Shannon, prop. n.: An American engineer and mathematician who invented information theory, the mathematics of bits and communication, and wrote one of the first plans for a chess-playing computer. sought Rockefeller Foundation support for ten researchers in a proposal dated 31 August 1955, whose premise was that no part of learning or intelligence lay, in principle, beyond exact specification, and therefore beyond simulation by a machine. Its topics ranged from neuron netsneural network, n.: A kind of computer program that learns a task from examples by tuning thousands to billions of connections between simple number-crunching units, an arrangement loosely inspired by nerve cells in the brain. and machine use of language to self-improvement, abstraction, and randomness and creativity. Attendance shifted from week to week: Allen NewellAllen Newell, prop. n.: An American computer scientist who, with Herbert Simon, wrote early AI programs that solved problems the way people do, and who sought a single theory of how the mind works. and Herbert A. SimonHerbert A. Simon, prop. n.: An American scientist of decision-making who, with Allen Newell, wrote some of the first AI programs and argued that minds and computers both think by manipulating symbols. brought the Logic TheoristLogic Theorist, prop. n.: A 1956 computer program that proved theorems from a classic logic textbook by searching cleverly rather than trying every possibility. Many historians count it as the first AI program., a reasoning program that already ran, and Arthur SamuelArthur Samuel, prop. n.: An American IBM engineer whose checkers program improved by playing against itself, and whose 1959 paper helped make 'machine learning' the name of a field., Ray SolomonoffRay Solomonoff, prop. n.: An American mathematician who worked out an ideal mathematical recipe for predicting what comes next from past data, and who attended the 1956 meeting that launched AI., Oliver Selfridge and Trenchard More were among the others. It produced no joint findings; its legacy was a name for the field, an agenda weighted toward symbolic methodssymbolic AI, n.: An approach to AI that writes knowledge down as human-readable symbols and rules, such as 'every bird has wings', and reasons by manipulating them step by step instead of learning patterns from data., and personal ties among the people who went on to found the main AI laboratories, at MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Stanford.
Histories of AI usually start the clock at the Dartmouth workshop of 1956.
Origin
The proposal, drafted in 1955 by McCarthy, then a young assistant professor of mathematics at Dartmouth, is the earliest known use of the phrase 'artificial intelligence'. McCarthy later said he chose the name partly to keep the new field distinct from cyberneticscybernetics, n.: The study of how animals, machines and organizations steer themselves using feedback: sensing the result of an action and correcting course. It was both a parent and an early rival of AI. and automata theory. The Rockefeller Foundation granted $7,500, a little over half of the $13,500 requested.
Usage note
Often called the Dartmouth Conference, though it was an extended working session rather than a conference with papers. The proposal's expectation that a 'significant advance' could come from one summer's work is a classic example of early optimism about AI.
Related
- artificial intelligenceartificial intelligence, n.: Computer systems that do things we would normally credit to a thinking mind, such as holding a conversation, reading an X-ray or planning a route, and the field of research that builds them.
- Logic TheoristLogic Theorist, prop. n.: A 1956 computer program that proved theorems from a classic logic textbook by searching cleverly rather than trying every possibility. Many historians count it as the first AI program.
- symbolic AIsymbolic AI, n.: An approach to AI that writes knowledge down as human-readable symbols and rules, such as 'every bird has wings', and reasons by manipulating them step by step instead of learning patterns from data.
- cyberneticscybernetics, n.: The study of how animals, machines and organizations steer themselves using feedback: sensing the result of an action and correcting course. It was both a parent and an early rival of AI.
- AI winterAI winter, n.: A slump in which disappointment over AI's unmet promises leads governments and companies to pull back money and attention. Historians count two big ones: one in the 1970s and one starting in the late 1980s.
- John McCarthyJohn McCarthy, prop. n.: The American computer scientist who coined the term 'artificial intelligence', invented the Lisp programming language and championed formal logic as the route to machine common sense.
Sources
- McCarthy, J., Minsky, M. L., Rochester, N. & Shannon, C. E. (1955). A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. Reprinted in AI Magazine 27(4), 2006.
Mentioned in
artificial intelligenceartificial intelligence, n.: Computer systems that do things we would normally credit to a thinking mind, such as holding a conversation, reading an X-ray or planning a route, and the field of research that builds them., symbolic AIsymbolic AI, n.: An approach to AI that writes knowledge down as human-readable symbols and rules, such as 'every bird has wings', and reasons by manipulating them step by step instead of learning patterns from data., Claude ShannonClaude Shannon, prop. n.: An American engineer and mathematician who invented information theory, the mathematics of bits and communication, and wrote one of the first plans for a chess-playing computer., cyberneticscybernetics, n.: The study of how animals, machines and organizations steer themselves using feedback: sensing the result of an action and correcting course. It was both a parent and an early rival of AI., human-level AIhuman-level AI, n.: AI that can match an ordinary adult across the whole range of thinking tasks, such as talking, learning, reasoning and planning. An older, more intuitive name for the goal now usually called general AI., John McCarthyJohn McCarthy, prop. n.: The American computer scientist who coined the term 'artificial intelligence', invented the Lisp programming language and championed formal logic as the route to machine common sense., Logic TheoristLogic Theorist, prop. n.: A 1956 computer program that proved theorems from a classic logic textbook by searching cleverly rather than trying every possibility. Many historians count it as the first AI program., Marvin MinskyMarvin Minsky, prop. n.: An American AI pioneer who helped launch the field and MIT's AI laboratory, co-wrote a famous critique of early neural networks, and pictured the mind as a society of many simple parts., IBM ResearchIBM Research, prop. n.: The research division of the computer company IBM, behind landmark AI systems such as the chess champion Deep Blue and the quiz-show winner Watson., Oliver SelfridgeOliver Selfridge, prop. n.: A British-born American computer scientist who pioneered teaching machines to recognize patterns; his 1959 'Pandemonium' model did it through layers of simple, competing detectors., Ray SolomonoffRay Solomonoff, prop. n.: An American mathematician who worked out an ideal mathematical recipe for predicting what comes next from past data, and who attended the 1956 meeting that launched AI.