From Philip Woodward
The term “Artificial Intelligence” was not coined by John McCarthy as stated in your brief history of AI (23 April, p 35), though the conference at Dartmouth College in 1956 (which I did not attend) was probably the occasion of its first public use. In the first semester of that year, I was a visiting lecturer at Harvard when Marvin Minsky and Oliver Selfridge called at my office on the Van Vleck bridge. They said they were seeking a snappy title for intelligent behaviour by computers, as a need for such a term would soon be urgent.
We decided on “intelligence” before pausing to find a good adjective. I suggested “artificial”, they were happy, and left. Archivists have attempted to verify this with the other parties to no avail, so an event has become an anecdote, and I suffer a little tic whenever John McCarthy is credited with the etymology.
Malvern, Worcestershire, UK
