SESKStuff Everyone Should Know
SESK: Stuff Everyone Should Know · sesk.info/ai-dartmouth-1956

What 1956 event is called the birth of AI as a field of research?

The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, organized by John McCarthy.

Start playing free

  1. The Dartmouth summer research project ✔
  2. The launch of ENIAC
  3. The first chess computer match

Why: In 1956, a small group of scientists met at Dartmouth College for a summer project on artificial intelligence. John McCarthy organized it, and it is seen as the start of AI as a field.

Huh, didn't know that: The proposal bet that every feature of intelligence can be described so precisely that a machine can simulate it.

The dad joke
The Dartmouth scientists planned a summer of AI. Seventy years later, we are still on the first homework assignment.
Like this card?
Play the game

References

Answer: The Dartmouth summer research project. In 1956, a small group of scientists met at Dartmouth College for a summer project on artificial intelligence. John McCarthy organized it, and it is seen as the start of AI as a field.

  1. Dartmouth: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Coined at Dartmouth home.dartmouth.edu/about/artificial-intelligence-ai-coined-dartmouth
    a small group of scientists gathered for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, which was the birth of this field
    Checked 2026-10-10.

Think this answer is wrong? Tap "Challenge this answer" on the card in the game and tell us why.

Test yourself in the game

Artificial IntelligenceHow do AI, machine learning and deep learning fit together?Artificial IntelligenceWhat did Alan Turing call his 1950 test of machine intelligence?Artificial IntelligenceTuring predicted that by about 2000, judges would ID the machine at most what percent of the time?

That's stuff everyone should know.