Talk:MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

Foundation

The linked paper says in the abstract "The MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory began in 1959 as a small group of research students, systems engineers and interested faculty. In 1963 the group joined Project MAC, ..." This seems to clash with the description on this wiki page: "The MIT Artifical Intelligence Laboratory started as a section, focused on research in artificial intelligence, of Project MAC" Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 07:39, 20 November 2018 (CET)

I guess it depends on whether you're talking about the group of people, or the Laboratory as a formal entity. I'll see if I can come up with a better word than 'started'. Jnc (talk) 13:41, 20 November 2018 (CET)

So if I understand correctly, maybe add something like "The Laboratory developed from an informal group of AI researchers started in 1959."? If indeed the AI group started before Project MAC, I think that's an interesting piece of information. Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 07:48, 21 November 2018 (CET)

OK, I think I got it all covered now.

Project MAC has precursors that go back before 1963 too; the CTSS work started well before that, and there's probably other stuff I'm less familiar with. And of course Whirlwind was very early indeed, but I don't know how strong the links were from that to MAC (unlike the CTSS connection, which was very strong indeed). Jnc (talk) 13:19, 22 November 2018 (CET)

Thanks, that looks fine.

I too thought about Project MAC prehistory, and added a little bit to that wiki page.