AI is also not always about building a human out of silicon, but about building something that is in some specific ways better (albeit much worse in other ways). For example, we ideally want to understand what it's doing and why, something we so far understand fairly imperfectly for humans. We also want to be able to control it fairly directly and reliably--- a society of AIs that you have to herd like cats and coax into doing what you want isn't quite what most engineers looking to plug in intelligent modules into their systems are looking for. We also want it to be very reliable and fast at tasks that humans do poorly or get bored doing, like scanning huge quantities of data to find patterns.
At least, that's how it looks from an engineering side. If the end result is that all you get is a human, well, we already have humans; just hire them instead. From a philosophical and technical side creating artificial humans does still remain quite fascinating.
At least, that's how it looks from an engineering side. If the end result is that all you get is a human, well, we already have humans; just hire them instead. From a philosophical and technical side creating artificial humans does still remain quite fascinating.