The 1956 Dartmouth workshop is widely considered the birth of artificial intelligence as a distinct academic field.
The event was formally called the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. It was proposed by John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Shannon, and took place at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, during the summer of 1956.
The proposal argued that aspects of learning and intelligence could be described precisely enough for machines to simulate them. Researchers discussed topics including language, neuron nets, complexity theory, and machine self-improvement. The meeting did not produce one finished AI system, but it helped establish a shared research identity.
The term “artificial intelligence” already appeared in the workshop proposal, so the event is not the first appearance of the phrase in every possible sense. Its historical importance comes from organizing a sustained research agenda around machine intelligence.