Birth of AI: Inside the 1956 Dartmouth Workshop

In this episode of Alephic Research, we travel back to the sweltering summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College to relive the workshop that officially launched artificial intelligence. Through memoirs and correspondence, we sit alongside John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, Herbert Simon and others as they clash over symbolic logic vs. neural nets, unveil early programs like the Logic Theorist, and sketch out AI’s core research agenda. Tune in to hear how a hot Hanover classroom—and a bit of chalk dust—sparked collaborations and debates whose legacy still drives AI today.