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In the summer of 1956, a group of researchers gathered at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. People drifted in and out over the weeks, so the room was rarely the same twice. They had been invited by a young mathematician named John McCarthy.
The names in the room were not obscure. McCarthy. Marvin Minsky. Claude Shannon. Herbert Simon. Allen Newell. Between them, they would go on to define computer science.
The year before, they had submitted a proposal for the meeting. One sentence in it has been quoted ever since:
"We propose that a 2-month, 10-man study of artificial intelligence be carried out... 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."
Read that again. Every aspect of intelligence. In principle. Described precisely enough that a machine can simulate it. That was the bet they were making.