1943–1956 · 7 key events · 16 related people, organisations and concepts
Birth of a field
Artificial neurons, the imitation game and the Dartmouth proposal give the field its questions and its name.
1943
A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity
In 1943 Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts described a simplified model of a neuron and showed that networks of such units can carry out logical reasoning, an early link between brain models and computation.
1948
A Mathematical Theory of Communication
C. E. Shannon's 1948 paper set out a mathematical framework for communication, defining information in bits, channel capacity, and entropy, and treating messages statistically while setting aside semantic meaning.
1950
Computing Machinery and Intelligence
In 1950 Alan Turing replaced the question "Can machines think?" with the imitation game, now called the Turing test, and answered the main objections to machine intelligence one by one.
Turing publishes “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”
Turing introduced the imitation game as a way to discuss machine intelligence through observable behavior.
1955
Dartmouth AI summer research proposal is written
In August 1955 four researchers proposed a summer study at Dartmouth College on making machines simulate learning and other features of intelligence. The document is credited with introducing the term "artificial intelligence."
1956
Logic Theorist is presented at the Dartmouth summer conference
In the summer of 1956, at the conference that gave artificial intelligence its name, Newell and Simon presented Logic Theorist, a program that proved theorems from Principia Mathematica. The reception was lukewarm.
The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence takes place
In the summer of 1956 a small group of researchers gathered at Dartmouth College for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, widely regarded as the founding event of AI as a research field.
