Skip to main content

Dartmouth Conference on Artificial Intelligence in 1956

The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence was the name of a 1956 undertaking now considered the seminal event for artificial intelligence as a field.

Organised by John McCarthy (then at Dartmouth College) and formally proposed by McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester and Claude Shannon, the proposal is credited with introducing the term 'artificial intelligence'.

The project lasted a month, and it was essentially an extended brainstorming session. The introduction states:

“We propose that a 2 month, 10 man study of artificial intelligence be carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture 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.”


(McCarthy et al. 1955)

The proposal goes on to discuss computers, natural language processing, neural networks, theory of computation, abstraction and creativity (these areas within the field of artificial intelligence are considered still relevant to the work of the field). According to Stottler Henke Associates, besides the proposal's authors, attendees at the conference included Ray Solomonoff, Oliver Selfridge, Trenchard More, Arthur Samuel, Herbert A. Simon, and Allen Newell.


 Dartmouth Conferences - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Baconian method

The Baconian method is the investigative method developed by Sir Francis Bacon . The method was put forward in Bacon's book Novum Organum (1620), or 'New Method', and was supposed to replace the methods put forward in Aristotle 's Organon . This method was influential upon the development of scientific method in modern science ; but also more generally in the early modern rejection of medieval Aristotelianism . Bacon's method is an example of the application of inductive reasoning . By reasoning using "induction", Bacon meant the ability to generalize a finding stepwise, based on accumulating data. He advised proceeding by this method, or in other words, by building a case from the ground up. He wrote in the Novum Organum that: "Our only hope, then is in genuine Induction... There is the same degree of licentiousness and error in forming Axioms, as in abstracting Notions: and that in the first principles, which depend in common induction. Stil...
4 comments
Read more

To PC or NPC: That is the question

When it's time to gear up and get LARPing (live action role playing), you have a decision to make. Do you want to play as a PC (player character) or NPC (non-player character)? For most LARPers, there are several factors involved in making this decision. A PC generally gets to make his or her own choices and become a hero (or villain) on an adventure. An NPC is usually tied to plot and limited in such choices, although there are sometimes phenomenal combat and role play opportunities available to NPCs as well. To PC or NPC: That is the question - National LARP | Examiner.com
Post a Comment
Read more

Fundamental attribution error

In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect) is people's tendency to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics to explain someone else's behavior in a given situation, rather than thinking about external situational. It does not explain interpretations of one's own behavior—where situational factors are more easily recognized and can thus be taken into consideration. The flip side of this error is the actor–observer bias, in which people tend to overemphasize the role of a situation in their behaviors and underemphasize the role of their own personalities. As a simple example, consider a situation where Alice, a driver, is about to pass through an intersection. Her light turns green, and she begins to accelerate when another car drives through the red light and crosses in front of her. The fundamental attribution error may lead her to think that the driver of the other car was an unskilled or rec...
Post a Comment
Read more