John McCarthy, an assistant professor at Dartmouth University, named the discipline 'artificial intelligence' after initially trying 'Automata Studies'.

“Historical records confirm John McCarthy was an assistant professor of mathematics at Dartmouth College when he coined the term 'artificial intelligence' in his 1955 proposal for the 1956 Dartmouth workshop. However, the claim that he initially tried 'Automata Studies' is debatable. Some sources state this was his original name for the field. Other sources clarify that 'Automata Studies' was the title of a collection of essays he co-edited with Claude Shannon, and McCarthy's dissatisfaction with its narrow focus prompted him to coin 'artificial intelligence' to define a new field. Context: McCarthy chose the name 'artificial intelligence' specifically to differentiate his proposed research from existing fields like cybernetics and automata theory, which he felt were not sufficiently focused on the goal of creating machines that could reason like humans.”