Artificial Intelligence: What is it?
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Systems that perceive, infer and act
Established · Overview reviewed 2026-11-03
Artificial intelligence studies how machines can perform tasks involving learning, reasoning, language or decision-making. It includes rule-based methods, search and machine learning. Success at one task does not establish human-like understanding or competence in unrelated settings.
Dartmouth summer research proposal — McCarthy, Minsky, Rochester and Shannon / Stanford archive · Source date: 1955-08-31 · Checked
AI Risk Management Framework and research profiles — NIST · Source date: 2023-01-26 · Checked
An ambitious research programme
Established · 1955 proposal; summer 1956 project
The Dartmouth proposal named artificial intelligence in 1955 and proposed a summer 1956 research project. Its goals included language, abstraction and self-improvement. Those were research ambitions, not capabilities already achieved at the time; that distinction still matters when reading announcements.
Dartmouth summer research proposal — McCarthy, Minsky, Rochester and Shannon / Stanford archive · Source date: 1955-08-31 · Checked