Seventy Years After the Birth of AI, the Work Begins

In August 1955, The Rockefeller Foundation received a bold and prescient proposal from a young mathematician named John McCarthy at Dartmouth College. He wanted support for a two-month summer study “to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves.” In that proposal, which The Rockefeller Foundation supported with a $7,500 grant, McCarthy coined a new term — artificial intelligence. The five-week 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project that followed is now seen as the birth of the AI revolution.

Seventy years later, AI is no longer a theory typed onto a grant proposal. It’s here — powerful, pervasive, and reshaping nearly every corner of society.

The question before us is not whether AI will change the world, but whether it will change it for everyone. Can this technology be harnessed to lift up our most vulnerable populations — or will it deepen the divides already straining our societies?

At The Rockefeller Foundation, we believe AI must be applied with urgency and intention to the world’s most pressing challenges. That’s why we’ve partnered with the State of Maryland, Anthropic — a leading AI safety and research company, and Percepta — a General Catalyst Transformation Company — to show what it looks like when the best of government, philanthropy, and technology work together.

Maryland has identified a set of AI-shaped problems — issues so complex and data-driven that AI can help solve them — from tackling child poverty to expanding affordable housing. The goal is clear yet ambitious: to harness AI to make Maryland’s most essential government services more effective, efficient, and accessible for every resident.

Under this partnership, Anthropic is equipping a subset of power users within Maryland’s workforce with access to its Claude tools to reimagine how social services are delivered. Percepta engineers will embed within state agencies to provide hands-on technical assistance — building capacity and ensuring that this expertise lives within government, not just outside it.

This is a new phase of a collaboration that launched in June 2025 and proof that when cutting-edge technology meets mission-driven governance, real people’s lives can improve.

At a moment when many Americans are losing faith in government’s ability to deliver, this partnership offers a hopeful model: one where AI becomes a bridge — not a barrier — between citizens and their institutions. Tight budgets and rising public expectations demand a new operating model. Public-private partnerships like this one can help chart that path.

We’re committed to documenting and sharing what works — and what doesn’t — in the early days of the AI age. This month, together with the Center for Civic Futures, we launched the AI Readiness Project, a knowledge network for state AI leads. It will help states learn from one another and apply lessons from pilots like Maryland’s to their own challenges.

The story that began with a proposal to The Rockefeller Foundation seventy years ago continues. The tools have evolved, but the question remains the same: how can we use intelligence — human and artificial — to build a more equitable world?