The ‘optimistic’ quote from the Dartmouth Conference seems ambiguous in its optimism to me. They say ‘a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems’, rather than that any of them can be solved (as they are often quoted as saying). What constitutes a ‘significant advance’ varies with optimism, so their statement seems consistent with them believing they can make an arbitrarily small step. The whole proposal is here, if anyone is curious about the rest.
Off the top of my head I don’t recall, but I bet Machine Who Think has detailed coverage of those early years and can probably shed some light on how much advance the Dartmouth participants expected.
The ‘optimistic’ quote from the Dartmouth Conference seems ambiguous in its optimism to me. They say ‘a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems’, rather than that any of them can be solved (as they are often quoted as saying). What constitutes a ‘significant advance’ varies with optimism, so their statement seems consistent with them believing they can make an arbitrarily small step. The whole proposal is here, if anyone is curious about the rest.
Off the top of my head I don’t recall, but I bet Machine Who Think has detailed coverage of those early years and can probably shed some light on how much advance the Dartmouth participants expected.