"Artificial Intelligence"

The term "artificial intelligence'' was coined by Dartmouth mathematician John McCarthy in 1956. The phrase appeared in a proposal McCarthy made to the Rockefeller Foundation for a ten-month study into "how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves."

The term caught on. McCarthy went on to MIT in 1958 to work with fellow V.I. mathematician Manvin Minsky and to invent the computer language 1 LISP.

Soft-talking HAL in the movie "2001" was spun off a concept named by a Dartmouth prof.