Clinton Huxley wrote:Rev, I reckon AI is another of these "always 50 years away" technologies. It may be AI, it may be genetic footling but I doubt any Human 1.0s will be about in 1000 years.
50 years ago, nobody imagined a personal computer that fits in your pocket and which you can talk to and which talks back, and which can make wireless telephone calls and video conferences around the glob instantly with one person sitting in a coffee shop in Rio Branco Brazil and another in a coffee shop in Papua New Guinea, both simultaneously accessing libraries of human knowledge which were completely inaccessible to almost everyone even 20 years ago. That would have been among the things you considered so much fantasy.
However, at the time, certain things were feasible, like the beginnings of satellites and global positioning systems, etc., superconducter technology, solid state electronics....all sorts of smaller bits and pieces.
There is no sense poo-pooing. We don't know what the puzzle will look like in 50 more years, and we'll likely be as wrong about what the place will look like in 2063 as people were in 1963 about today. But, there are bits and pieces that we can wrap minds around and that we can develop. Those things we should do. IMO. The alternative is to not do them. What's the sense in not doing them?
There's a number of prominent thinkers who think we will never achieve AI. I happen to think we will, but it's interesting to see your apparent cognitive dissonance in this regard. 
