Then the idea got a name

In 1955, four researchers proposed a summer project about making machines use language, form concepts, solve problems, and improve themselves. They gave this area of research a new name: artificial intelligence.

The plan was a two month study by ten men.

Their proposal started from a bold assumption.

They would proceed, they wrote, on the basis 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."

Precisely described. That was the bet. If intelligence could be described in enough detail, a machine could follow the description.

The summer did not produce a thinking machine. The question is what made the problem harder than the proposal expected.

Then the idea got a name

The plan was a two month study by ten men.

Their proposal started from a bold assumption.

They would proceed, they wrote, on the basis 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."

Precisely described. That was the bet. If intelligence could be described in enough detail, a machine could follow the description.

The summer did not produce a thinking machine. The question is what made the problem harder than the proposal expected.