A PROPOSAL FOR THE DARTMOUTH SUMMER RESEARCH PROJECT ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

A PROPOSAL FOR THE DARTMOUTH SUMMER RESEARCH PROJECT ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 Next: About this document 

 
 
 
A PROPOSAL FOR THE
DARTMOUTH SUMMER RESEARCH PROJECT
ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

 J. McCarthy, Dartmouth College 
 
M. L. Minsky, Harvard University 
 
N. Rochester, I.B.M. Corporation 
 
C.E. Shannon, Bell Telephone Laboratories 

 
 August 31, 1955 

 
 
We propose that a 2 month, 10 man study of artificial intelligence be
carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover,
New Hampshire. The study is to proceed 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. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use
language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now
reserved for humans, and improve themselves. We think that a
significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a
carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a
summer.
 
The following are some aspects of the artificial intelligence
problem: 
 
1 Automatic Computers 
 
If a machine can do a job, then an
automatic calculator can be programmed to simulate the machine. The
speeds and memory capacities of present computers may be insufficient
to simulate many of the higher functions of the human brain, but the
major obstacle is not lack of machine capacity, but our inability to
write programs taking full advantage of what we have. 
 
2. How Can a Computer be Programmed to Use a Language 
 
It may be speculated that a large part of human thought consists of
manipulating words according to rules of reasoning and rules of
conjecture. From this point of view, forming a generalization consists
of admitting a new word and some rules whereby sentences containing it
imply and are implied by others. This idea has never been very
precisely formulated nor have examples been worked out.
 
 
3. Neuron Nets 
 
How can a set of (hypothetical) neurons be
arranged so as to form concepts. Considerable theoretical and
experimental work has been done on this problem by Uttley, Rashevsky
and his group, Farley and Clark, Pitts and McCulloch, Minsky,
Rochester and Holland, and others. Partial results have been obtained
but the problem needs more theoretical work. 
 
 
4. Theory of the Size of a Calculation 
 
If we are given a well-defined problem (one for which it
is possible to test mechanically whether or not a proposed answer is a
valid answer) one way of solving it is to try all possible answers in
order. This method is inefficient, and to exclude it one must have
some criterion for efficiency of calculation. Some consideration will
show that to get a measure of the efficiency of a calculation it is
necessary to have on hand a method of measuring the complexity of
calculating devices which in turn can be done if one has a theory of
the complexity of functions. Some part

... (truncated, 30 KB total)