The term ‘artificial intelligence’ was coined for a summer conference at Dartmouth University, organised by a young computer scientist, John McCarthy.
Top scientists debated how to tackle AI. Some, like influential academic Marvin Minsky, favoured a top-down approach: pre-programming a computer with the rules that govern human behaviour. Others preferred a bottom-up approach, such as neural networks that simulated brain cells and learned new behaviours. Over time Minsky’s views dominated, and together with McCarthy he won substantial funding from the US government, who hoped AI might give them the upper hand in the Cold War.
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