Unlike your warp drive or teleporter examples, we're pretty sure human-level AI is possible because human-level natural intelligence exists. The brain isn't magic. Eventually, people will figure out the algorithms running on it, then improve them. After that, there's nothing to stop the algorithms from improving themselves. And they can be greatly improved. Current brains are nowhere near the pinnacle of possible intelligences.
> Far from being the smartest possible biological species, we are probably better thought of as the stupidest possible biological species capable of starting a technological civilization—a niche we filled because we got there first, not because we are in any sense optimally adapted to it.
— Nick Bostrom. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies[1]
It seems to me merely figuring out the algorithms isn't enough; you have to have a similar scale of processing power, and the brain has some 100 trillion connections, which cannot easily be replicated with silicon chips. So for all intents and purposes, the brain might as well be magic.
I suppose someday we'll be able to grow brain tissue and use it in a computing environment. Maybe that will allow us to approach true AI.
Thank you for your response! I agree that unlike a warp drive we can at least say that intelligence exists. But I think that is begging the question. For as long as we have records, people have experienced the mind as something sui generis compared to the physical. Maybe it's not magic, but it's far from understood. I think it remains to be seen if it is replicatable by physical processes.
> Far from being the smartest possible biological species, we are probably better thought of as the stupidest possible biological species capable of starting a technological civilization—a niche we filled because we got there first, not because we are in any sense optimally adapted to it.
— Nick Bostrom. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies[1]
1. http://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-N...