Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AI Lab). Housed within the Ray and Maria Stata Center, CSAIL is the largest on-campus laboratory as measured by research scope and membership. It is part of the Schwarzman College of Computing^[1] but is also overseen by the MIT Vice President of Research.^[2]

CSAIL's research activities are organized around a number of semi-autonomous research groups, each of which is headed by one or more professors or research scientists. These groups are divided up into seven general areas of research:

• Artificial intelligence
• Computational biology
• Graphics and vision
• Language and learning
• Theory of computation
• Robotics
• Systems (includes computer architecture, databases, distributed systems, networks and networked systems, operating systems, programming methodology, and software engineering, among others)

Computing Research at MIT began with Vannevar Bush's research into a differential analyzer and Claude Shannon's electronic Boolean algebra in the 1930s, the wartime MIT Radiation Laboratory, the post-war Project Whirlwind and the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), and MIT Lincoln Laboratory's SAGE in the early 1950s. At MIT, research in the field of artificial intelligence began in the late 1950s.^[3]

From 1963 to 2004, Project MAC, LCS, the AI Lab, and CSAIL had their offices at 545 Technology Square, taking over more and more floors of the building over the years. In 2004, CSAIL moved to the new Ray and Maria Stata Center, which was built specifically to house it and other departments.

The IMARA (from Swahili word for "power") group sponsors a variety of outreach programs that bridge the global digital divide. Its aim is to find and implement long-term, sustainable solutions which will increase the availability of educational technology and resources to domestic and international communities. These projects are run under the aegis of CSAIL and staffed by MIT volunteers who give training, install and donate computer setups in greater Boston, Massachusetts, Kenya, Native American Indian tribal reservations in the American Southwest such as the Navajo Nation, the Middle East, and Fiji Islands. The CommuniTech project strives to empower under-served communities through sustainable technology and education and does this through the MIT Used Computer Factory (UCF), providing refurbished computers to under-served families, and through the Families Accessing Computer Technology (FACT) classes, it trains those families to become familiar and comfortable with computer technology.^[17][18][19]

(Including members and alumni of CSAIL's predecessor laboratories)

• MacArthur Fellows Tim Berners-Lee, Erik Demaine, Dina Katabi, Daniela L. Rus, Regina Barzilay, Peter Shor, Richard Stallman, and Joshua Tenenbaum
• Turing Award recipients Leonard M. Adleman, Fernando J. Corbató, Shafi Goldwasser, Butler W. Lampson, John McCarthy, Silvio Micali, Marvin Minsky, Ronald L. Rivest, Adi Shamir, Barbara Liskov, and Michael Stonebraker
• IJCAI Computers and Thought Award recipients Terry Winograd, Patrick Winston, David Marr, Gerald Jay Sussman, Rodney Brooks
• Rolf Nevanlinna Prize recipients Madhu Sudan, Peter Shor, Constantinos Daskalakis
• Gödel Prize recipients Shafi Goldwasser (two-time recipient), Silvio Micali, Maurice Herlihy, Charles Rackoff, Johan Håstad, Peter Shor, and Madhu Sudan
• Grace Murray Hopper Award recipients Robert Metcalfe, Shafi Goldwasser, Guy L. Steele, Jr., Richard Stallman, and W. Daniel Hillis
• Textbook authors Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, Richard Stallman, Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Patrick Winston, Ronald L. Rivest, Barbara Liskov, John Guttag, Jerome H. Saltzer, Frans Kaashoek, Clifford Stein, and Nancy Lynch
• David D. Clark, former chief protocol architect for the Internet; co-author with Jerome H. Saltzer (also a CSAIL member) and David P. Reed of the influential paper "End-to-End Arguments in Systems Design"^[20]
• Eric Grimson, expert on computer vision and its applications to medicine, appointed Chancellor of MIT March 2011
• Bob Frankston, co-developer of VisiCalc, the first computer spreadsheet
• Seymour Papert, inventor of the Logo programming language
• Joseph Weizenbaum, creator of the ELIZA computer-simulated therapist

Directors of Project MAC

• Robert Fano, 1963–1968
• J. C. R. Licklider, 1968–1971
• Edward Fredkin, 1971–1974
• Michael Dertouzos, 1974–1975

Directors of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

• Marvin Minsky, 1970–1972
• Patrick Winston, 1972–1997
• Rodney Brooks, 1997–2003

Directors of the Laboratory for Computer Science

• Michael Dertouzos, 1975–2001
• Victor Zue, 2001–2003

Directors of CSAIL

• Rodney Brooks, 2003–2007
• Victor Zue, 2007–2011
• Anant Agarwal, 2011–2012
• Daniela L. Rus, 2012–

CSAIL Alliances is the industry connection arm of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).^[24] CSAIL Alliances offers companies programs to connect with the research, faculty, students, and startups of CSAIL by providing organizations with opportunities to learn about the research, engage with students, explore collaborations with researchers, and join research initiatives such as FinTech at CSAIL,^[25] MIT Future of Data,^[26] and Machine Learning Applications.^[27][28]

• "A Marriage of Convenience: The Founding of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on May 14, 2011. Retrieved December 30, 2007., Chious et al. — includes important information on the Incompatible Timesharing System
• Weizenbaum. Rebel at Work: a documentary film with and about Joseph Weizenbaum
• Garfinkel, Simson (1999). Abelson, Hall (ed.). Architects of the Information Society: Thirty-Five Years of the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-07196-7.

• Official website of CSAIL, successor of the AI Lab