Humanity has thought general AI (instant slaves) was coming soon for THOUSANDS of years. When pottery was high tech people wanted golems. When irrigation was cutting edge people thought the brain ran on a mix of "humors". Early dissection/voltaic experiments gave us Frankenstein. When clockwork was cool we had the mechanical turk (and "tik-tok the mechanical man"). When radios ran on wall current "metropolis" had an electric woman, then Robby the Robot was solid state, C3PO full of microchips...