History of I²

The idea of an Intelligence Initiative was suggested by Josh Tenenbaum (mainly) and by Tomaso Poggio in discussions with Rafael Reif (MIT Provost), Mriganka Sur (BCS Chair) and Marc Kastner (Dean of the School of Science). From the earliest stages, Chairman Sur and Dean Kastner strongly supported the idea and pushed Tommy and Josh to make something happen. Trying to spread an I² infection at MIT, Josh and Tommy discussed the idea with a number of MIT faculty, MIT friends and agencies such as NSF.

Here is a sample of a few small steps over the past few years:

April 24th: Tomaso Poggio discussed the Intelligence Initiative in a multi-division talk at NSF
May 5th: Tomaso Poggio and Josh Tenenbaum presented the Intelligence Initiative to the BCS Visiting Committee.
June 3rd: Josh Tenebaum, Patrick Winston, Nancy Kanwisher, Sandy Pentland, Deb Roy, Leslie Kaelbling and Tomaso Poggio describe aspects of the Intelligence Initiative to the Advisory Council of the School of Science.
June: Josh Tenenbaum discussed I² in a presentation at the CSAIL retreat.
October 9th: Tomaso Poggio discussed I², and the Dec 4th workshop, at NSF (with Haym Hirsch and Ken Whang).
October 13th: the first I²-sponsored miniseries of Lectures on Intelligence starts with a talk by Shimon Ullman (Weizman) by the title . The first I² party follows at the Blue Room.
December 4th: first I² sponsored workshop; a one-day event which was attended by almost fifty MIT faculty members, along with guests from NSF and Harvard University.
December 18th: first in a series of lunch meetings to discuss white papers. Prof. Matt Wilson and Prof. Nick Roy to lead a discussion on the the topic: “Intelligence: Space, Action and Navigation.

September 15th: Social Intelligence Working Group: Inaugural Talks
October 8th: Awarded the first series I² Seed Grants
October: Inaugrual semester of the I² Seminar Series

March: Inaugrual semester of the I² Tea: Informal Discussion Series
May 3rd-5th: MIT150 Symposia: Brains, Minds and Machines

History of I2

History of I²