Seventy years ago this summer, a small group of scientists gathered at Dartmouth College to explore a fundamental question: Can machines learn, reason, and solve problems in ways similar to human intelligence?
This workshop gave us the term “artificial intelligence” and started one of the most significant technological revolutions in history. Today, governments, universities, and technology companies around the world are celebrating 70 years of AI and competing to become AI leaders.
But there is a hidden irony in AI’s origin story.
In the same year that Dartmouth’s workshop introduced a new vision for computing, the federal government was imposing restrictions on two of the companies most closely associated with that vision: AT&T and IBM.
Claude Shannon of Bell Laboratories is one of the principal architects of modern information theory, a co-author of the Dartmouth Workshop, and a former employee of AT&T’s Bell Laboratories. IBM researchers were among the pioneers in researching machine learning and advanced computing. However, in 1956, the Justice Department closed its antitrust lawsuit against both companies. AT&T was limited to regulated telecommunications operations and had to license its patents broadly. IBM was forced to change its business model, including selling machines rather than relying primarily on lease agreements to provide ongoing customer engagement.
It is impossible to know whether these laws have slowed the development of artificial intelligence. History does not provide a control group. Bell Labs continued to produce groundbreaking research, and IBM remained at the center of computing innovation.
More important lessons lie elsewhere.
Antitrust actions reflected a view of the economy shaped by the industrial era. Regulators believe that market power is concentrated in phones and tabulation machines, and are trying to reshape these industries to encourage more competition. They focused on the most successful companies and business models of their time.
What they did not understand was that the future would not be defined by telephone service or punch-card spreadsheets, but by the convergence of computing, communications, and information networks. The most important economic developments of the next half-century will come from technologies that are still largely invisible to policymakers but envisioned by innovators.
This is not a criticism of antitrust enforcement per se. Governments have good reason to be concerned about market power and barriers to competition. Rather, it is a reminder of the limits of our foresight.
Innovation rarely emerges as a single breakthrough. It emerges through countless interactions between universities, entrepreneurs, established companies, investors, and customers. Paths are unpredictable. Technology developed for one purpose often becomes the foundation for an entirely different industry. Shannon’s information theory helped create modern communication networks. Those networks helped make the Internet possible. The Internet has helped generate the data and computing infrastructure that makes modern AI possible.
The danger is that policymakers as well as business leaders are tempted to fight the final war. We often evaluate companies according to current market definitions and current competitive concerns. Meanwhile, the next technological paradigm is taking shape beyond our horizons.
That lesson feels especially relevant today. Antitrust authorities around the world are once again scrutinizing the biggest technology companies. Policymakers are once again debating how much power is too much in a rapidly evolving digital market.
Some of those concerns may be justified. But the year of AI’s birth reminds us that companies that seem dominant today may also be helping create tomorrow’s technological possibilities. The challenge is not a choice between competition and innovation. We recognize that innovation often comes from places and organizations that do not fit neatly into our theory of competition.
In 1956, government officials were trying to address a visible situation. A few researchers gathered at Dartmouth imagined possibilities that few others could. History remembers both. But only one of them helped pave the way for the future.
