Attention has focused on artificial general intelligence — the stage when AI can match all feats of human cognition. The person who coined the most familiar label later saw it as a threat.
In the summer of 1956, a group of academics, people we would now call computer scientists though that description did not exist then, met on the Dartmouth College campus in New Hampshire to explore how to make machines think like humans. They sketched research agendas, shared early ideas and argued about what experiments might yield progress.
One of the participants, John McCarthy, coined the term "artificial intelligence." The conference and the naming of a formal field are widely cited in histories of computing. Records from that workshop informed agendas and projects that followed in subsequent decades.
McCarthy's caution appears striking today as debate over artificial general intelligence grows and powerful systems attract intense attention.