In the second part of its summer series “AI before AI”, FRANCE 24 looks at the early days of artificial intelligence. In 1955, the Rockefeller Foundation rejected a $13,500 request to fund a conference submitted by John McCarthy, a young American mathematician. The foundation balked at approving the money, equivalent to more than $160,000 today, for a field of research that did not yet exist. McCarthy teamed up with Marvin Minsky, and they convinced other heavyweights to join, including Nathaniel Rochester, who invented the first commercial computer for IBM, and Claude Shannon, whose reputation was established following his 1948 paper on the mathematical theory of communication. They promised to explore topics including automatic computers, neural networks, a computer “programmed to use a language” and the “self-improvement” of intelligent machines. Warren Weaver, director of the Division of Natural Sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation, offered hope. Weaver was a friend of Shannon’s, and the application was addressed directly to him. Although Weaver found the proposal interesting, he felt it was focused on how the brain works, and that brain research sounded more like medicine than mathematics.