Era 03 / 15 · Dartmouth 1956 1956

The field is named

A summer workshop gave the field its name and its founding conjecture.

Beat 1 · Concrete — Summer 1956

A spark catches

In a small workshop, one idea ignites — and the founding conjecture letters in.

“Every aspect of learning can be so precisely described that a machine can simulate it.”

dawn = the founding optimism, catching

Beat 2 · Abstract — The agenda

It branches into a field

From that one spark, the sub-fields the proposal named light up in sequence.

The Dartmouth agenda as a constellation A central spark radiates lines to six named ambitions: Learning, Language, Reasoning, Search, Neural Nets, and Creativity. Learning Language Reasoning Search Neural Nets Creativity
each node = one ambition the proposal named

Beat 3 · Interactive — Promise vs. delivery

How long did each take?

Hover or tap an ambition. The gap between promise and delivery foreshadows the winters.

Each ambition, honestly marked Activating each ambition reveals whether it was solved soon or took decades — the gap the field underestimated. Learning took decades Language took decades Reasoning solved soon Search solved soon Neural Nets took decades Creativity took decades
solved soon took decades — the gap hover / tap a node
Footnotes & nods

The name

"Artificial Intelligence"

John McCarthy coined the term in the 1955 proposal, partly to avoid the baggage of "cybernetics."

The room

Ten men, one summer

McCarthy, Minsky, Shannon, Rochester — and visitors Newell & Simon, who arrived already running a working program.

The optimism

"Two months"

The proposal believed a summer of ten people could make significant progress. The winters were decades away.