I agree we have a long way to go, and I don't know enough about the state of the art to say whether we're heading down the wrong road or not. But I'd like to point out an something that made an impact on me. Thomas Nagel's essay "What is it like to be a bat?":
He makes a distinction between subjective understanding of consciousness ("What is it like to be X?") and the objective understanding (What are the atoms and neurons doing? What is the structure of the mind?) I think this distinction is a big part of why you, and society as a whole, dismisses AI.
We have a much deeper objective understanding of computers than we do about our own brains. But comparatively, bats are as familiar as our own siblings next to our subjective understanding of "what it is like" to be a computer. We simply have no basis for comparison. We can't put ourselves in a computer's shoes. And without this subjective, gut feeling comparison, people in general find it difficult or impossible to assign the word "intelligence" to any non-humanoid entity, be it whales, robots, or computers.
No, whales are intelligent alright. There's no doubt about that. Bats almost certainly are as well. At least I believe they are self-aware and have an inner life as an individual as well as being part of a group.
I also am a great believer in things being more than just the sum of their parts -- or at least to have that potential. I just don't believe there are any sentient machines. Yet. And I'm not going to waste my time anthropomorphising them.
Because that's not going to make them happen any sooner.
http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/nagel_nice.html
He makes a distinction between subjective understanding of consciousness ("What is it like to be X?") and the objective understanding (What are the atoms and neurons doing? What is the structure of the mind?) I think this distinction is a big part of why you, and society as a whole, dismisses AI.
We have a much deeper objective understanding of computers than we do about our own brains. But comparatively, bats are as familiar as our own siblings next to our subjective understanding of "what it is like" to be a computer. We simply have no basis for comparison. We can't put ourselves in a computer's shoes. And without this subjective, gut feeling comparison, people in general find it difficult or impossible to assign the word "intelligence" to any non-humanoid entity, be it whales, robots, or computers.