Did you know AI was Irish?

The man who named artificial intelligence was the son of a Kerry fisherman.

Not from Silicon Valley or a campus lab. From a fishing village called Cromane, fewer than 300 people, 9 km west of Killorglin.

John Patrick McCarthy saw no future for himself in Ireland. He left for London, met his wife Ida, and together they crossed to Boston. Their son, John, was born there in 1927.

John McCarthy Jr became one of the most important figures in the history of computing. In 1955 he gathered a small group of researchers for a summer workshop at Dartmouth College. The question: could machines be made to think? He needed a name for what they were exploring.

He chose artificial intelligence.

That was seventy-one years ago. He thought they could crack it in one summer. They are still at it.

Every chatbot, agent, and AI tool you have ever used traces its name back to the son of a man who left Kerry because he wanted something better for his family.

I tell this story to clients regularly. Not because it changes how you use AI in your business. But because it is a useful reminder that the biggest shifts rarely start where you expect.

When I first heard the name McCarthy, I was afraid he was from Cork. Could you imagine. We would never hear the end of it.

AI is not Irish. But the person who gave the field its name grew up in a home shaped by emigration and by the belief that the next generation could build something the current one could not.

If that is not an Irish story, I do not know what is.