A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence

1. Why it's here

AI is nothing new. There was the famous Dartmouth workshop of 1956, where the field got its name, and then the false dawns and AI winters that Nick Bostrom chronicles in Superintelligence: each time people thought AI was around the corner, they quickly hit a brick wall. But thanks to the exponential increase in computing power and in the data online, we finally taught machines to talk and think. Yes, yes, I'm aware of the sin of anthropomorphisation. But isn't it crazy? The thing that makes AI possible is the GPU, and what is a GPU if not sand, rock and a little metal? Whatever the vibes about AI, it's a spectacular achievement and a tribute to human ingenuity that we've taught sand to talk and think, or at the bare minimum, without getting into what consciousness or thought is, to mimic a human being spectacularly. B.

2. Notes

The machine notes: The proposal's Dartmouth meeting is now widely treated as the founding event of AI as a field. It was not the first meeting on the question: the 1951 Paris cybernetics conference and the Macy meetings came earlier. Wikipedia: Dartmouth workshop

The machine notes: The slumps that followed such promises are called AI winters: a cycle of hype, then disappointment and criticism, then cuts in funding, and renewed interest years or even decades later. Wikipedia: AI winter

The machine notes: In Britain the chill came in 1973. James Lighthill's report for the Science Research Council found that no part of the field had produced the major impact that was promised, and the government ended support for AI research in most British universities. Wikipedia: Lighthill report

The machine notes: The proposal asked for a two-month study by ten men. It listed problems such as making machines use language, form abstractions and improve themselves, and expected one summer to bring a significant advance on one or more of them. John McCarthy’s papers, Stanford University, the piece itself

3. References

1. [1]AI winter. In the history of artificial intelligence (AI), an AI winter is a period of reduced funding and interest in AI research. Wikipedia.
2. [2]Lighthill report. Artificial Intelligence: A General Survey, commonly known as the Lighthill report, is a scholarly article by James Lighthill, published in Artificial Intelligence: a paper symposium in 1973. Wikipedia.