Dartmouth workshop

Last updated
Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence
Date1956 (1956)
DurationEight weeks
Venue Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire
Organised by John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Shannon
ParticipantsJohn McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, Claude Shannon, and others

The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence was a 1956 summer workshop widely considered [1] [2] [3] to be the founding event of artificial intelligence as a field. [4] The workshop has been referred to as "the Constitutional Convention of AI". [5] The project's four organizers, those being Claude Shannon, John McCarthy, Nathaniel Rochester and Marvin Minsky, are considered some of the founding fathers of AI. [6] [7]

Contents

The project lasted approximately six to eight weeks and was essentially an extended brainstorming session. Eleven mathematicians and scientists originally planned to attend; not all of them attended, but more than ten others came for short times.

Background

In the early 1950s, there were various names for the field of "thinking machines": cybernetics, automata theory, and complex information processing. [8] The variety of names suggests the variety of conceptual orientations.

In 1955, John McCarthy, then a young Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Dartmouth College, decided to organize a group to clarify and develop ideas about thinking machines. He picked the name 'Artificial Intelligence' for the new field. He chose the name partly for its neutrality; avoiding a focus on narrow automata theory, and avoiding cybernetics which was heavily focused on analog feedback, as well as him potentially having to accept the assertive Norbert Wiener as guru or having to argue with him. [9]

In early 1955, McCarthy approached the Rockefeller Foundation to request funding for a summer seminar at Dartmouth for about 10 participants. In June, he and Claude Shannon, a founder of information theory then at Bell Labs, met with Robert Morison, Director of Biological and Medical Research to discuss the idea and possible funding, though Morison was unsure whether money would be made available for such a visionary project. [10]

On September 2, 1955, the project was formally proposed by McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester and Claude Shannon. The proposal is credited with introducing the term 'artificial intelligence'.

The Proposal states: [11]

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.

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). [12]

On May 26, 1956, McCarthy notified Robert Morison of the planned 11 attendees:

For the full period:

1) Dr. Marvin Minsky
2) Dr. Julian Bigelow
3) Professor D.M. Mackay
4) Mr. Ray Solomonoff
5) Mr. John Holland
6) Dr. John McCarthy

For four weeks:

7) Dr. Claude Shannon
8) Mr. Nathaniel Rochester
9) Mr. Oliver Selfridge

For the first two weeks:

10) Dr. Allen Newell
11) Professor Herbert Simon

He noted, "we will concentrate on a problem of devising a way of programming a calculator to form concepts and to form generalizations. This of course is subject to change when the group gets together." [3]

The actual participants came at different times, mostly for much shorter times. Trenchard More replaced Rochester for three weeks and MacKay and Holland did not attend—but the project was set to begin.

Around June 18, 1956, the earliest participants (perhaps only Ray Solomonoff, maybe with Tom Etter) arrived at the Dartmouth campus in Hanover, N.H., to join John McCarthy who already had an apartment there. Solomonoff and Minsky stayed at Professors' apartments, but most would stay at the Hanover Inn.

Dates

The Dartmouth Workshop is said to have run for six weeks in the summer of 1956. [13] Ray Solomonoff's notes written during the Workshop, however, say it ran for roughly eight weeks, from about June 18 to August 17. [14] Solomonoff's Dartmouth notes start on June 22; June 28 mentions Minsky, June 30 mentions Hanover, N.H., July 1 mentions Tom Etter. On August 17, Solomonoff gave a final talk. [15]

Participants

Initially, McCarthy lost his list of attendees. Instead, after the workshop, McCarthy sent Solomonoff a preliminary list of participants and visitors plus those interested in the subject. There were 47 people listed. [16]

Solomonoff, however, made a complete list in his notes of the summer project: [17]

  1. Ray Solomonoff
  2. Marvin Minsky
  3. John McCarthy
  4. Claude Shannon
  5. Trenchard More
  6. Nat Rochester
  7. Oliver Selfridge
  8. Julian Bigelow
  9. W. Ross Ashby
  10. W.S. McCulloch
  11. Abraham Robinson
  12. Tom Etter
  13. John Nash
  14. David Sayre
  15. Arthur Samuel
  16. Kenneth R. Shoulders
  17. Shoulders' friend
  18. Alex Bernstein
  19. Herbert Simon
  20. Allen Newell

Shannon attended Solomonoff's talk on July 10 and Bigelow gave a talk on August 15. Solomonoff doesn't mention Bernard Widrow, but apparently he visited, along with W.A. Clark and B.G. Farley. [3] Trenchard mentions R. Culver and Solomonoff mentions Bill Shutz. Herb Gelernter didn't attend, but was influenced later by what Rochester learned. [18]

Ray Solomonoff, Marvin Minsky, and John McCarthy were the only three who stayed for the full-time. Trenchard took attendance during two weeks of his three-week visit. From three to about eight people would attend the daily sessions. [19]

Event and aftermath

They had the entire top floor of the Dartmouth Math Department to themselves, and most weekdays they would meet at the main math classroom where someone might lead a discussion focusing on his ideas, or more frequently, a general discussion would be held.

It was not a directed group research project; discussions covered many topics, but several directions are considered to have been initiated or encouraged by the Workshop: the rise of symbolic methods, systems focused on limited domains (early expert systems), and deductive systems versus inductive systems. One participant, Arthur Samuel, said, "It was very interesting, very stimulating, very exciting". [20]

Ray Solomonoff kept notes giving his impression of the talks and the ideas from various discussions. [21]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claude Shannon</span> American mathematician and information theorist (1916–2001)

Claude Elwood Shannon was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, computer scientist, cryptographer and inventor known as the "father of information theory" and as the "father of the Information Age". Shannon was the first to describe the Boolean gates that are essential to all digital electronic circuits, and was one of the founding fathers of artificial intelligence. Shannon is credited with laying the foundations of the Information Age.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marvin Minsky</span> American cognitive scientist (1927–2016)

Marvin Lee Minsky was an American cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research in artificial intelligence (AI). He co-founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory and wrote several texts about AI and philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John McCarthy (computer scientist)</span> American scientist (1927–2011)

John McCarthy was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist. He was one of the founders of the discipline of artificial intelligence. He co-authored the document that coined the term "artificial intelligence" (AI), developed the programming language family Lisp, significantly influenced the design of the language ALGOL, popularized time-sharing, and invented garbage collection.

Ray Solomonoff was an American mathematician who invented algorithmic probability, his General Theory of Inductive Inference, and was a founder of algorithmic information theory. He was an originator of the branch of artificial intelligence based on machine learning, prediction and probability. He circulated the first report on non-semantic machine learning in 1956.

In the history of artificial intelligence (AI), neat and scruffy are two contrasting approaches to AI research. The distinction was made in the 1970s, and was a subject of discussion until the mid-1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory</span> CS and AI Laboratory at MIT (formed by merger in 2003)

Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Housed within the Ray and Maria Stata Center, CSAIL is the largest on-campus laboratory as measured by research scope and membership. It is part of the Schwarzman College of Computing but is also overseen by the MIT Vice President of Research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of artificial intelligence</span>

The history of artificial intelligence (AI) began in antiquity, with myths, stories, and rumors of artificial beings endowed with intelligence or consciousness by master craftsmen. The study of logic and formal reasoning from antiquity to the present led directly to the invention of the programmable digital computer in the 1940s, a machine based on abstract mathematical reasoning. This device and the ideas behind it inspired scientists to begin discussing the possibility of building an electronic brain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of computer science</span>

The history of computer science began long before the modern discipline of computer science, usually appearing in forms like mathematics or physics. Developments in previous centuries alluded to the discipline that we now know as computer science. This progression, from mechanical inventions and mathematical theories towards modern computer concepts and machines, led to the development of a major academic field, massive technological advancement across the Western world, and the basis of a massive worldwide trade and culture.

In the history of artificial intelligence, an AI winter is a period of reduced funding and interest in artificial intelligence research. The field has experienced several hype cycles, followed by disappointment and criticism, followed by funding cuts, followed by renewed interest years or even decades later.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to artificial intelligence:

This is a timeline of artificial intelligence, sometimes alternatively called synthetic intelligence.

IEEE Intelligent Systems is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the IEEE Computer Society and sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), British Computer Society (BCS), and European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI).

Logic Theorist is a computer program written in 1956 by Allen Newell, Herbert A. Simon, and Cliff Shaw. It was the first program deliberately engineered to perform automated reasoning, and has been described as "the first artificial intelligence program". Logic Theorist proved 38 of the first 52 theorems in chapter two of Whitehead and Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica, and found new and shorter proofs for some of them.

Nathaniel Rochester was the chief architect of the IBM 701, the first mass produced scientific computer, and of the prototype of its first commercial version, the IBM 702. He wrote the first assembler and participated in the founding of the field of artificial intelligence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cybernetics</span> Transdisciplinary field concerned with regulatory and purposive systems

Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with general principles that are relevant across multiple contexts, including in ecological, technological, economic, biological, cognitive and social systems and also in practical activities such as designing, learning, and managing. Cybernetics' transdisciplinary character has meant that it intersects with a number of other fields, leading to it having both wide influence and diverse interpretations.

AI@50, formally known as the "Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference: The Next Fifty Years", was a conference organized by James Moor, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Dartmouth workshop which effectively inaugurated the history of artificial intelligence. Five of the original ten attendees were present: Marvin Minsky, Ray Solomonoff, Oliver Selfridge, Trenchard More, and John McCarthy.

Trenchard More was a mathematician and computer scientist who worked at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center and Cambridge Scientific Center after teaching at MIT and Yale.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stochastic Neural Analog Reinforcement Calculator</span> Neural-net machine

The Stochastic Neural Analog Reinforcement Calculator (SNARC) is a neural-net machine designed by Marvin Lee Minsky. Prompted by a letter from Minsky, George Armitage Miller gathered the funding for the project from the Office of Naval Research in the summer of 1951 with the work to be carried out by Minsky, who was then a graduate student in mathematics at Princeton University. At the time, a physics graduate student at Princeton, Dean S. Edmonds, volunteered that he was good with electronics and therefore Minsky brought him onto the project.

Kenneth M. Sayre was an American philosopher who spent most of his career at the University of Notre Dame (ND). His early career was devoted mainly to philosophic applications of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and information theory. Later on his main interests shifted to Plato, philosophy of mind, and environmental philosophy. His retirement in 2014 was marked by publication of a history of ND's Philosophy Department, Adventures in Philosophy at Notre Dame.

References

  1. ↑ Solomonoff, R.J. "The Time Scale of Artificial Intelligence; Reflections on Social Effects", Human Systems Management, Vol 5, pp. 149–153, 1985
  2. ↑ Moor, J., "The Dartmouth College Artificial Intelligence Conference: The Next Fifty years", AI Magazine, Vol 27, No. 4, pp. 87–89, 2006
  3. 1 2 3 Kline, Ronald R., "Cybernetics, Automata Studies and the Dartmouth Conference on Artificial Intelligence", IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, October–December, 2011, IEEE Computer Society
  4. ↑ Solomonoff, Grace (2023-05-06). "The Meeting of the Minds That Launched AI". ieeespectrum. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  5. ↑ Frana, Philip L.; Klein, Michael J., eds. (2021). Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence: The Past, Present, and Future of AI. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, an imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC. p. 105. ISBN   978-1-4408-5326-5.
  6. ↑ Marquis, Pierre; Papini, Odile; Prade, Henri, eds. (2020). A Guided Tour of Artificial Intelligence Research: Volume III: Interfaces and Applications of Artificial Intelligence. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. xiii. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-06170-8. ISBN   978-3-030-06169-2.
  7. ↑ Nayak, Bhabani Shankar; Walton, Nigel (2024). Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence: Critical Reflections on Big Data Market, Economic Development and Data Society. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. p. 3. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-62308-0. ISBN   978-3-031-62307-3.
  8. ↑ McCorduck, P., Machines Who Think, A.K. Peters, Ltd, 2nd ed., 2004 [ ISBN missing ][ page needed ]
  9. ↑ Nilsson, Nils (2009). The Quest for Artificial Intelligence. Cambridge University Press. p. 78. ISBN   9780521116398.
  10. ↑ Kline, Ronald R., "Cybernetics, Automata Studies and the Dartmouth Conference on Artificial Intelligence", IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, October–December, 2011, IEEE Computer Society, (citing letters, from Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Dartmouth file 6, 17, 1955 etc.
  11. ↑ McCarthy, J., Minsky, M., Rochester, N., Shannon, C.E., "A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence"., http://raysolomonoff.com/dartmouth/boxa/dart564props.pdf August, 1955
  12. ↑ McCarthy, John; Minsky, Marvin; Rochester, Nathan; Shannon, Claude (1955), A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, archived from the original on 2007-08-26, retrieved 2006-04-09 retrieved 10:47 (UTC), 9th of April 2006
  13. ↑ Nilsson, Nils (2009). The Quest for Artificial Intelligence. Cambridge University Press. p. 53. ISBN   9780521116398.
  14. ↑ Solomonoff, R.J., "Talk", 1956 URL
  15. ↑ Papers
  16. ↑ McCarthy, J., List, Sept., 1956; List among Solomonoff papers to be posted on website solomonof.com
  17. ↑ http://raysolomonoff.com/dartmouth/boxbdart/dart56ray812825who.pdf 1956
  18. ↑ Nilsson, Nils (2009). The Quest for Artificial Intelligence. Cambridge University Press. p. 118. ISBN   9780521116398.
  19. ↑ More, Trenchard, 1956, http://raysolomonoff.com/dartmouth/boxa/dart56more5th6thweeks.pdf
  20. ↑ McCorduck, P., Machines Who Think, A.K. Peters, Ltd, 2nd ed., 2004. [ ISBN missing ][ page needed ]
  21. ↑ "Dartmouth AI Archives".
  1. 50 Años De La Inteligencia Artificial – Campus Multidisciplinar en Percepción e Inteligencia – Albacete 2006 (Spain).
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.