A Different Kind of History of AI

Manuel Wörsdörfer offers an interdisciplinary history of AI, organized as lessons about methods, institutions, funding, commercialization, and ethical concerns. Its long original title quotes the Dartmouth research proposal.^[1]

Approach and relevance

The inspected author manuscript synthesizes historical writings and later scholarship rather than testing a new AI system. It argues that AI Alignment and governance should take historical context seriously, including recurring gaps between ambitious forecasts and actual progress.^[1]

Evidence limits

Use this work as an attributed interpretation and guide to primary material. Its compressed chronology needs independent checking: the manuscript says the AI term was coined during the 1956 workshop, whereas the dated 1955 proposal already contains it. The wiki’s events therefore rely on original documents rather than importing this timeline wholesale. Some retrieved footnotes have corrupted text extraction.

SSRN lists January 1, 2026 as the date written and January 28 as posting; those are distinct from historical events discussed in the article.