The idea of a thinking machine goes back centuries. In the 13th century the Catalan philosopher Ramon Llull built the Ars Magna, a system of rotating paper discs inscribed with concepts, designed to generate truths by combining them mechanically. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, in the 17th century, built a mechanical calculator and dreamed of a universal symbolic language in which disputes could be settled by calculation, with the words "Let us calculate!" He also described the binary number system. Their visions anticipated modern computing and AI.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.