The idea that we might one day be able to construct some artefact which has a mind in the same sense that we have minds is not a new one. It has featured in entertaining and frightening fictions since Mary Shelley first conceived of Frankenstein’s monster.

        In the classic science fiction of the early to mid-twentieth century, this idea was generally cashed out in terms of ‘mechanical men’ or robots – from the Czech word robata, which translates roughly as the feudal term corvée, a term which refers to the unpaid labour provided to one’s liege lord.

    In more modern fiction, the idea of a mechanical mind has given way to the now commonplace notion of a computational artificial intelligence. The possibility of actually developing artificial intelligence, however, is not just a question of sufficiently advanced technology. It is rather a philosophical question.