Talented programmers such as Richard Stallman, who used Text Editor and Corrector to write Emacs, flourished in the AI Lab during this time.

Contributors included about two dozen members and associates of the AI Lab.

Gabriel tried to start up, with Dave Waltz, an AI Lab at the University of Illinois, but after two years the lab fell through due to general apathy.

Chaosnet was first developed by Thomas Knight and Jack Holloway at MIT's AI Lab in 1975 and thereafter.

The AI Lab was funded by the Department of Defense so they were also the target of protests.

One other center of hacker culture was Stanford's AI Lab (SAIL) which had been started by John McCarthy.

The AI Lab could not hire any hacker who showed talent anymore.

In 1980, Stallman and some other hackers at the AI Lab were refused access to the source code for the software of a newly installed laser printer, the Xerox 9700.

Symbolics recruited most of the remaining hackers including notable hacker Bill Gosper, who then left the AI Lab.

Until around 1998, his office at MIT's AI Lab was also his residence.