This article is featured in the 2025 Homecoming Special Issue.
Nearly 70 years ago, a small group of researchers gathered at Dartmouth College for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, where the acronym AI was coined. The meeting was organized by mathematics professor John McCarthy who said that the purpose of the conference was to operate as if “every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.”
Today, AI has become a staple of Dartmouth life for students and professors alike. When walking through Baker on any average weekday, ChatGPT can be seen on many a student’s laptop screen; almost every single professor’s syllabus contains an AI policy; it seems that every other day, the College releases a new statement on their handling of AI’s rapid expansion and development. Whether it’s the marketing rollout of their new mental health AI tool Evergreen.AI, a new departmental addendum to adapt to AI or just a promotional article on the success of alumni as they graduate into the industry itself, these two letters have become inescapable both on and off campus.
With students, faculty and alumni alike gathering for the Homecoming laser show, The Dartmouth found AI a fitting theme for the Homecoming issue. Through this collection of stories, our writers and editors analyze and attempt to understand every method through which AI has wormed its way into the crevices of the College — whether it’s academic departments, technology or even campus romance. And we did it, painstakingly, the good old-fashioned way.
Thinking…
Jack, Matthew, Sophia
