I should have used "not sure if ever" because everyone keeps getting caught up on that. I was being provocative.

I too thought we were in a new era. But then I learned the mechanics of how this tech works and its limitations. Then I compared with the thing we are trying to emulate/simulate see even more limitations. I base my conjecture of "never" on the severe hardware limitations I can see.

I use the word "never" because I know that if we were to overcome those limitations, it would be with machinery that looks and operates nothing like anything we have now (von neumann, finite instruction set architecture. The stored program computer essentially), so much so that all of the hangups we currently have with things like job loss and runaway superintelligence, do not apply.

We have made many gains, sure. But I try to point out that the symbol grounding problem persists, we just hid all the human involvement. None of you believes that Expert Systems will lead to an AGI, but "neural networks" are given a lot of leeway because of that illusion.

People made progress with Alchemy too.