The road to artificial intelligence: A case of data over theory

IN the summer of 1956, a remarkable collection of scientists and engineers gathered at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Among them were computer scientist Marvin Minsky, information theorist Claude Shannon and two future Nobel prizewinners, Herbert Simon and John Nash. Their task: to spend the summer months inventing a new field of science called "artificial intelligence" (AI). They did not lack in ambition, writing in their funding application: "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." Their wish list was "to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves".