Claim · 1972-07 · event · Stated in source · Supported

Lighthill's survey singles out failure to recognise the implications of the combinatorial explosion as one general cause of the disappointments he reports in AI research.

One recorded claim. The claim panel gives its qualification, the source passages with their place in each source, and how it was checked.

What it connects

Artificial Intelligence: A General Survey → discusses →

Where it appears

No collection page holds this claim. It is listed with its records in the explorer.

Claim and evidence

Artificial Intelligence: A General Surveydiscusses ↓

Machine-checked, not reviewed by an editorStated in sourceSupported

Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source

Date: 1972-07 · event Records dated 1972 →

Scope and limitsLighthill's assessment, which he presents as his personal view; it records what the survey says, not that the assessment is correct. Replies by Sutherland, Needham, Longuet-Higgins and Michie in the same paper symposium were not read.

The evidence 01

primary sourceSupports the claim

Artificial Intelligence: A General Survey (Lighthill), Part I of the Lighthill Report

Science Research Council (publisher); transcription hosted by chilton-computing.org.uk · 1973

Cite the original source

Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.

Source excerpt

“he is inclined, as a mathematician, to single out one rather general cause for the disappointments that have been experienced: failure to recognise the implications of the combinatorial explosion.”

Location in source Part I, section 3, Past disappointments

How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher

Machine-checked · 2026-10-31

Source details and check notes

Authors: James Lighthill
Version: Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29 (SHA-256 2189f12803cb2cee3a80c429efcab1c2398f34ae7d90e038e688084583b36694). HTML transcription on chilton-computing.org.uk (Chilton Computing / UKRI STFC), Part I page p001
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-29
Language: English (en)
Attribution: James Lighthill, “Artificial Intelligence: A General Survey (Lighthill), Part I of the Lighthill Report”, 1973.
Reuse: No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution.
Check notes: Candidate pack passage, Kinds of AI and technical history (research/technical-history). The quotation (29 words) matched the text retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29. Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes, PDF line-break hyphens and Unicode compatibility forms, so the source’s typography can differ. A cross-family machine check (31 October 2026, item 120) re-read the record’s sources and found that they support what the record states. No human editorial review.

Status and meaning

Editorial status. Not reviewed by an editor. An exploratory record that no editor has accepted. This status does not say whether a person has read any linked passage. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.

Relation. The concept is explicitly discussed in the document. This makes no earliest-use, invention or transmission claim.

Date. Date of the event as the text states it; the text’s own date is separate. Survey dated July 1972; published by the Science Research Council in 1973.

Record ID th-sp-lighthill-1972-combinatorial-explosion