The history of artificial intelligence began in antiquity, with myths, stories and rumors of artificial beings endowed with intelligence or consciousness by master craftsmen. AI began with "an ancient wish to forge the gods."
Mechanical men and artificial beings appear in Greek myths , such as the golden robots of Hephaestus and Pygmalion's Galatea. In the Middle Ages, there were rumors of secret mystical or alchemical means of placing mind into matter, such as homunculus and golems. By the 19th century, ideas about artificial men and thinking machines were developed in fiction, as in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or Karel Capek's Rossum's Universal robots, and speculation, such as Samuel Butter's "Darwin among the Machines."AI has continued to be an important element of science fiction into the present.
Realistic humanoid authomatons were built by craftsman from every civilization, including Yan Shi, Hero of Alexandria, Al-Jazari and Wolfgang von Kempelen. The oldest known authomatons were the sacred statues of ancient Egypt and Greece. The faithful believed that craftsman had imbued these figures with very real minds, capable of wisdom and emotion—Hermes Trismegistus wrote that "by discovering the true nature of the gods, man has been able to reproduce it."
Artificial intelligence is based on the assumption that the process of human thought can be mechanized. The study of mechanical — or "formal" — reasoning has a long history. Majorcan philosopher Ramon Llull (1232–1315) developed several logical machines devoted to the production of knowledge by logical means. In the 17th century, Leibniz, Thomas Hobbes, and Rene Descartes explored the possibility that all rational thought could be made as systematic as algebra or geometry.
In the 20th century, the study of mathematical logic provided the essential breakthrough that made artificial intelligence seem plausible. Russel and Whitehead presented a formal treatment of the foundations of mathematics in their masterpiece, the Principia Mathematica in 1913. Inspired by Russel's success, David Hilbert challenged mathematicians of the 1920s and 30s to answer this fundamental question: "can all of mathematical reasoning be formalized?"
Their answer was surprising in two ways. First, they proved that there were, in fact, limits to what mathematical logic could accomplish. But second (and more important for AI) their work suggested that, within these limits, any form of mathematical reasoning could be mechanized. The Church-Turing thesis implied that a mechanical device, shuffling symbols as simple as 0 and 1, could imitate any conceivable process of mathematical deduction. The key insight was the Turing machine — a simple theoretical construct that captured the essence of abstract symbol manipulation. This invention would inspire a handful of scientists to begin discussing the possibility of thinking machines.
You shouldn't be sceptical. Strong AI is reachable in the near future. All that we need is 10^19