The summer of the big bet

In the summer of 1956, researchers gathered at Dartmouth College for a workshop about whether machines could do intelligent work.

People visited for different lengths of time. and stayed only a few days, but arrived with a working program called the Logic Theorist.

The year before, the organizers had asked a foundation to fund the meeting. Their proposal rested on an enormous belief: every part of learning and intelligence could be described precisely enough for a machine to reproduce it.

That was the bet.