 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 . Chinese , Indian and Greek philosophers all developed structured methods of formal deduction in the first millennium BCE . Their ideas were developed over the centuries by philosophers such as <unk> ( who gave a formal analysis of the <unk> ) , Euclid ( whose Elements was a model of formal reasoning ) , Muslim mathematician al @-@ <unk> ( who developed algebra and gave his name to " algorithm " ) and European scholastic philosophers such as William of <unk> and Duns Scotus . 
