This year, the Artificial Intelligence community celebrates the golden anniversary of the 1956 Dartmouth Conference that marks the beginning of AI as a research field. This symposium will take stock of the promises and achievements of AI and looks ahead to the next 50 years.

The discussion will be moderated by Wilfried Brauer (TU München),
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This year, the Artificial Intelligence community celebrates the golden anniversary of the 1956 Dartmouth Conference that marks the beginning of AI as a research field. This symposium will take stock of the promises and achievements of AI and looks ahead to the next 50 years. The meeting will be moderated by Wilfried Brauer (TU München / U Bremen).

09:00-15:00h

09:00 Willi Lemke, Senator for Education and Science of the
Free Hanseatic City of Bremen
09:05h Bernd Reuse, Welcome Address by the
Federal Ministry of Education and Research
30 Years of Funding for Research into Artificial Intelligence in Germany [Download talk]
09:15h Marvin Minsky, „Father of AI“ organizer of the 1956 Dartmouth conference
1956-1966 How did it all begin? - Issues then and now
[Download talk]
09:55h Aaron Sloman, Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science,
The University of Birmingham (UK)
1966-1976 Fundamental questions [Download talk]
10:25h Wolfgang Bibel, Professor for Intellectics, Technische Universität Darmstadt
1976-1981 Towards the AI Summer [Download talk]

Jörg Siekmann, Professor of Artificial Intelligence, Universität des Saarlandes and German Research Center of Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)
1981-1986 AI in Germany [Download talk]

11:05h coffee break
11:35h Wolfgang Wahlster, AI pioneer in natural language interaction, winner of many awards, including the innovation prize 2001 of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany
1986-1996 Three Decades of Human Language Technology in Germany [Download talk]
12:05h Sebastian Thrun, Associate Professor of Computer Science and
Electrical Engineering, Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, USA
1996-2006 Autonomous Robots [Download talk]
12:35h coffee break
13:15h Hiroshi Ishiguro, constructs the most humanlike robots around
University of Osaka,
2006-2056 Projects and Vision in Robotics [Download talk]
13:35h Simon Schmitt, Kippenberg-Gymnasium, Winner of "Jugend forscht" youth
competition for best interdisciplinary contribution.
What will happen in algorithm country? [Download talk]
13:45 Panel Discussion on the Future of Artificial Intelligence
15:00h Tour of Exhibition "50 Years AI"
16:00h Bus transfer to DFKI Lab Bremen
16:30h DFKI open Lab
18:00h DFKI / Universität Bremen: AI Summer Party





  • Willi Lemke, Senator for Education and Science
  • Bernd Reuse, Promoter of the application of Artificial Intelligence at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research
  • Wilfried Brauer , Professor of Theoreticial Informatics and Foundations of Artificial Intelligence, Promoter of Artificial Intelligence Research in Germany.


  • Marvin Minsky, "Father of AI" and one of the organizers of the 1956 Dartmouth conference
  • Aaron Sloman, AI pioneer working on understanding the evolution of consciousness, emotions and motivations, but also representations and mathematical thinking
  • Wolfgang Bibel, AI pioneer in the area of automated deduction
  • Jörg Siekmann, AI pioneer in theorem proving
  • Sebastian Thrun and his vehicle "Stanley", winners of the 2005 Grand Challenge for autonomous vehicles
  • Wolfgang Wahlster, AI pioneer in natural language interaction, winner of many awards, including the innovation prize 2002 of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany
  • Hiroshi Ishiguro makes perhaps the most humanlike robots around




  • Conference Chairs
    • Christian Freksa
    • Kerstin Schill
  • Programme Chairs
    • Michael Kohlhase
    • Christian Freksa
  • Local Chair
    • Eva Raethe
  • Press Liaison
    • Sven Bertel


    BTW, for the Occasion of the 50th anniversary, Benjamin Kuipers has set up a AI Genealogy Project. Please consider enter yourself, your Ph.D. students, your advisors, ... this will make a good resource and map of the first 50 years of AI.