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1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence

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1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence A PROPOSAL FOR THE DARTMOUTH SUMMER RESEARCH PROJECT ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE J McCarthy Dartmouth College M L Minsky Harvard University N Ro chester IBM Corp oration CE Shannon Bell Telephone Lab oratories August We prop ose that a month man study of articial intelligence b e carried out during the summer of at Dartmouth College in Hanover New Hampshire The study is to pro ceed on the basis of the conjecture that every asp ect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle b e so precisely describ ed that a machine can b e made to simulate it An attempt will b e made to nd 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 signicant advance can b e 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 asp ects of the articial intelligence problem Automatic Computers If a machine can do a job then an automatic calculator can b e programmed to simulate the machine The sp eeds and memory capacities of present computers may b e insucient to simulate many of the higher functions of the human brain but the ma jor obstacle is not lack of machine capacity but our inability to write programs taking full advantage of what we have How Can a Computer b e Programmed to Use a Language It may b e sp eculated that a large part of human thought consists of manipulating words accord ing to rules of reasoning and rules of conjecture From this p oint 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 b een very precisely formulated nor have examples b een worked out Neuron Nets How can a set of hypothetical neurons b e arranged so as to form concepts Considerable theoretical and exp erimental work has b een done on this problem by Uttley Rashevsky and his group Farley and Clark Pitts and McCullo ch Minsky Ro chester and Holland and others Partial results have b een obtained but the problem needs more theoretical work Theory of the Size of a Calculation If we are given a welldened problem one for which it is p ossible to test mechanically whether or not a prop osed answer is a valid answer one way of solving it is to try all p ossible answers in order This metho d is inecient and to exclude it one must have some criterion for eciency of calculation Some consideration will show that to get a measure of the eciency of a calculation it is necessary to have on hand a metho d of measuring the complexity of calculating devices which in turn can b e done if one has a theory of the complexity of functions Some partial results on this problem have b een obtained by Shannon and also by McCarthy Selflmprovement Probably a truly intelligent machine will carry out activities which may b est b e describ ed as selfimprovement Some schemes for doing this have b een prop osed and are worth further study It seems likely that this question can b e studied abstractly as well Abstractions A number of types of abstraction can b e distinctly dened and several others less distinctly A direct attempt to classify these and to describ e machine metho ds of forming abstractions from sensory and other data would seem worthwhile Randomness and Creativity A fairly attractive and yet clearly incomplete conjecture is that the dierence b etween creative thinking and unimaginative comp etent thinking lies in the injection of a some randomness The randomness must b e guided by intuition to b e ecient In other words the educated guess or the hunch include controlled randomness in otherwise orderly thinking In addition to the ab ove collectively formulated problems for study we have asked the indi viduals taking part to describ e what they will work on Statements by the four originators of the pro ject are attached We prop ose to organize the work of the group as follows Potential participants will b e sent copies of this prop osal and asked if they would like to work on the articial intelligence problem in the group and if so what they would like to work on The invitations will b e made by the organizing committee on the basis of its estimate of the individuals p otential contribution to the work of the group The members will circulate their previous work and their ideas for the problems to b e attacked during the months preceding the working p erio d of the group During the meeting there will b e regular research seminars and opp ortunity for the members to work individually and in informal small groups The originators of this prop osal are C E Shannon Mathematician Bell Telephone Lab oratories Shannon developed the statistical theory of information the application of prop ositional calculus to switching circuits and has results on the ecient synthesis of switching circuits the design of machines that learn cryptography and the theory of Turing machines He and J McCarthy are coediting an Annals of Mathematics Study on The Theory of Automata M L Minsky Harvard Junior Fellow in Mathematics and Neurology Minsky has built a machine for simulating learning by nerve nets and has written a Princeton PhD thesis in math ematics entitled Neural Nets and the Brain Mo del Problem which includes results in learning theory and the theory of random neural nets N Ro chester Manager of Information Research IBM Corp oration Poughkeepsie New York Ro chester was concerned with the development of radar for seven years and computing machinery for seven years He and another engineer were jointly resp onsible for the design of the IBM Type which is a large scale automatic computer in wide use to day He worked out some of the automatic programming techniques which are in wide use to day and has b een concerned with problems of how to get machines to do tasks which previously could b e done only by p eople He has also worked on simulation of nerve nets with particular emphasis on using computers to test theories in neurophysiology J McCarthy Assistant Professor of Mathematics Dartmouth College McCarthy has worked on a number of questions connected with the mathematical nature of the thought pro cess including the theory of Turing machines the sp eed of computers the relation of a brain mo del to its environment and the use of languages by machines Some results of this work are included in the forthcoming Annals Study edited by Shannon and McCarthy McCarthys other work has b een in the eld of dierential equations The Ro ckefeller Foundation is b eing asked to provide nancial supp ort for the pro ject on the following basis Salaries of for each faculty level participant who is not b eing supp orted by his own organization It is exp ected for example that the participants from Bell Lab oratories and IBM Corp oration will b e supp orted by these organizations while those from Dartmouth and Harvard will require foundation supp ort Salaries of for up to two graduate students Railway fare for participants coming from a distance Rent for p eople who are simultaneously renting elsewhere Secretarial exp enses of for a secretary and for duplicating exp enses Organization exp enses of Includes exp ense of repro ducing preliminary work by participants and travel necessary for organization purp oses Exp enses for two or three p eople visiting for a short time Estimated Exp enses salaries of salaries of traveling and rent exp enses averaging Secretarial and organizational exp ense Additional traveling exp enses Contingencies PROPOSAL FOR RESEARCH BY C E SHANNON I would like to devote my research to one or b oth of the topics listed b elow While I hop e to do so it is p ossible that b ecause of p ersonal considerations I may not b e able to attend for the entire two months I nevertheless intend to b e there for whatever time is p ossible Application of information theory concepts to computing machines and brain mo dels A basic problem in information theory is that of transmitting information reliably over a noisy channel An analogous problem in computing machines is that of reliable computing using unreliable elements This problem has b een studies by von Neumann for Sheer stroke elements and by Shannon and Mo ore for relays but there are still many op en questions The problem for several elements the development of concepts similar to channel capacity the sharp er analysis of upp er and lower b ounds on the required redundancy etc are among the imp ortant issues Another question deals with the theory of information networks where information ows in many closed lo ops as contrasted with the simple oneway channel usually considered in communication theory Questions of delay b ecome very imp ortant in the closed lo op case and a whole new approach seems necessary This would probably involve concepts such as partial entropies when a part of the past history of a message ensemble is known The matched environment brain mo del approach to automata In general a machine or animal can only adapt to or op erate in a limited class of environments Even the complex human brain rst adapts to the simpler asp ects of its environment and gradually builds up to the more complex features I prop ose to study the synthesis of brain mo dels by the parallel development of a series of matched theoretical environments and corresp onding brain mo dels which adapt to them The emphasis here is on clarifying the environmental mo del and representing it as a math ematical structure
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