If AI ever had a birth certificate, complete with a date, that certificate would indicate August 31, 1955. On that day, four scientists whose names it is good to remember because they made history – John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester and Claude Shannon – publish a seventeen-page document that will be remembered as “the Dartmouth proposal,” which is the first time the term artificial intelligence is used.
The proposal – here in full version – was that “for two months, ten people would conduct a study on artificial intelligence during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, based on the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other form of intelligence can in principle be described so precisely that a machine can be built that can simulate it ”. In the course of the study, the proposal said, “an attempt will be made to discover how to build machines capable of using language, forming concepts and abstractions, solving those kinds of problems hitherto reserved for human beings, and improving oneself.” We think, the promoters concluded, “that a significant improvement can be achieved for one or more of these issues if a carefully chosen group of scientists can work together for a summer”.
In the summer of 1956, the “Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence” actually took place and in addition to the four promoters, six other scientists participated: Ray Solomonoff, Oliver Selfridge, Trenchard More, Arthur Samuel, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon (here a photo by group). In the summer of 2006 a new conference was organized at Dartmouth College, on the next 50 years of artificial intelligence. which saw 175 participants of which 5 were present at the first conference: Trenchard More, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Oliver Selfridge and Ray Solomonoff (here a report and some photos).
On that occasion John McCarthy – who when he made the proposal was a young assistant professor of mathematics in Dartmouth – will say: “At the time we believed that if only we could make sure that everyone interested in the subject would give it time without distractions. , we could have made great strides ”. There are conflicting versions as to how much the attendees of the first Dartmouth conference actually collaborated without distraction. But what everyone agrees on is that at that time the term artificial intelligence was born and a line of studies began that has not finished changing the world.
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