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Alberto Romero's avatar

I think it was John McCarthy, not Minsky, who came up with the term. First, Claude Shannon persuaded him that it was too "flashy" (if I remember correctly), so they tried something else but didn't work. Finally, they settled with AI because they knew it'd get more funding. So yeah, it was all for the money in some sense (I'd say they were honest about wanting to build agents with human-level intelligence, although they greatly underestimated the quest or overestimated their ability. Or both).

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Fred Hapgood's avatar

I pick "underestimated their quest". Remember what they called people who they thought were less intelligent than they were: simple. Given that prejudice it was an easy mistake to make.

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