Not the AI Lab, but Sussman and company's group that sort of stood between the AI Lab and the Lab for Computing Science (LCS), which did more classical types of CS.
E.g. artifacts that came from the AI Lab included the Lisp Machine and it's Ethernet style Chaosnet, while LCS was working on a token ring network and aside from their Nu machines and the NuBus, adopted by Apple, never made their own workstations. Or Maclisp (I think at some point) and Scheme, vs. CLU. Other things that came from LCS include RSA and the X window system (the latter due to a weird VAX 11/750 config that DEC created so it could donate them to MIT without suffering (much) from the GSA "Most Favored Customer" requirement to give the Federal government the best price you gave anyone else).
After some point Sussman and company created their own informal? unit which stood apart, getting their money from the NSF and using Scheme, and doing their own things, "Switzerland, Armed but Neutral", staying above/aside from the fighting between LCS and the AI Lab. Which as I recall hearing, was only resolved when the head of LCS died (but not before unduly influencing the architecture of their new and highly dysfunctional building), and the head of the AI Lab, who'd saved it when other AI Labs like Stanford's legendary one died, became the head of a combined Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory AKA CSAIL.
All the above is 2nd hand but from reliable sources, and remotely after mid-1991.
E.g. artifacts that came from the AI Lab included the Lisp Machine and it's Ethernet style Chaosnet, while LCS was working on a token ring network and aside from their Nu machines and the NuBus, adopted by Apple, never made their own workstations. Or Maclisp (I think at some point) and Scheme, vs. CLU. Other things that came from LCS include RSA and the X window system (the latter due to a weird VAX 11/750 config that DEC created so it could donate them to MIT without suffering (much) from the GSA "Most Favored Customer" requirement to give the Federal government the best price you gave anyone else).
After some point Sussman and company created their own informal? unit which stood apart, getting their money from the NSF and using Scheme, and doing their own things, "Switzerland, Armed but Neutral", staying above/aside from the fighting between LCS and the AI Lab. Which as I recall hearing, was only resolved when the head of LCS died (but not before unduly influencing the architecture of their new and highly dysfunctional building), and the head of the AI Lab, who'd saved it when other AI Labs like Stanford's legendary one died, became the head of a combined Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory AKA CSAIL.
All the above is 2nd hand but from reliable sources, and remotely after mid-1991.