The Birth of AI (1956)

Left: Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon, Ray Solomonoff and other scientists at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence (Photo: Margaret Minsky). Right: A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence (1955)

The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence was an academic workshop sometimes considered to be the founding moment for artificial intelligence as a field of research. Held for eight weeks in Hanover, New Hampshire in 1956, the conference gathered twenty or so of the brightest minds in computer- and cognitive science for a workshop committed to the idea that:

"..every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves. We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer."

— A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence (McCarthy et al, 1955)

Now seventy or so years later, …