The inventor of artificial intelligence (AI) is generally recognized as John McCarthy, an American computer scientist who coined the term "artificial intelligence" in 1955 and organized the seminal Dartmouth Conference in 1956, which is considered the founding event of AI as a formal research field
. McCarthy also developed the Lisp programming language, which became a standard tool for AI research
. Alan Turing, a British mathematician and computer scientist, is also a foundational figure in AI. He proposed the concept of machine intelligence and introduced the Turing Test in 1950, which provided a theoretical framework for evaluating a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior indistinguishable from that of a human
. While Turing laid important theoretical groundwork, McCarthy is credited with inventing AI as a distinct scientific discipline. Other key pioneers include Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, and Herbert A. Simon, who contributed to early AI research and development, but John McCarthy is most often called the "father of artificial intelligence" for his role in founding the field and coining its name
