[Ads-l] Definition of "Artificial Intelligence" (Item of Unusual Interest)

[Shapiro, Fred]

My wife and I are working on preparing to sell our home sometime in the next few years.  This requires me to downsize things, particularly my voluminous paper files.  As part of the downsizing process, I came across an item of particular interest in my papers.

The item in question is a printout of a 1996 email I received from John McCarthy, the most important figure in the early history of AI and the lead author of the document that is cited by the OED as its first use of the term "artificial intelligence."  I had emailed McCarthy asking about that document.  His response was the following:

"The earliest appearance will be in the proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence.  You can find that proposal in my Web page.  The proposal was made in 1955 for the summer of 1956.  The New Yorker noted the grant in a wise guy bottom-of-the-column squib.  The Program for the September 1956 meeting of the Institute of Radio Engineers in Boston mentioned the meeting and used the phrase.  I invented the phrase for the afore-mentioned proposal.  The OED, as I recall, also has the definition wrong, taking it as the simulation of human intelligence, whereas the standard useage [sic] does not require that artificial intelligence be accomplished by simulating human intelligence.  The point was made the [sic] 1955 proposal.  See http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history.dartmouth.html ."

Since then I have found two pre-1955 occurrences of the term "artificial intelligence," although many people would still consider McCarthy's use to be the origination.

Fred Shapiro






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