Dartmouth Summer Research Project: Artificial Intelligence is formally founded

Event Summary

The 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project where John McCarthy coined ‘Artificial Intelligence.’ The eight-week workshop that birthed AI as a field. Full history and legacy.

Impact Assessment

• Paradigm Shift +3 · Long-term

  Established AI as an independent scientific discipline with a unified name, research agenda, and community. The workshop's participants and their students went on to found the major AI laboratories at MIT, CMU, and Stanford.

  Affected Groups: AI researchers, academics, computer scientists

• Access Democratization +2 · Long-term

  Created the foundation for an open academic AI community. The workshop's interdisciplinary approach—bringing together mathematicians, psychologists, engineers, and information theorists—established a collaborative rather than siloed research culture.

  Affected Groups: academics, graduate students, interdisciplinary researchers

Consensus & Sources

• 1
  "Artificial Intelligence Coined at Dartmouth" — Dartmouth College

  URL: https://home.dartmouth.edu/about/artificial-intelligence-ai-coined-dartmouth

  In 1956, a small group of scientists gathered for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, which was the birth of this field of research.

  Reference Evidence Citation logged Live source
• 2
  "Dartmouth workshop" — Wikipedia

  URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_workshop

  Widely considered to be the founding event of artificial intelligence as a field.

  Reference Evidence Citation logged Live source
• 3
  "Commemorating 70 Years of Artificial Intelligence" — IEEE Spectrum (2026)

  URL: https://spectrum.ieee.org/70-years-of-artificial-intelligence

  AI as a distinct field was formally established in 1956 at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project.

  Reference Evidence Citation logged Live source