As important as it is to debunk the hype surrounding AI, it is also important to note that the recent advances in neural nets hinted that we're onto something regarding the functioning of the brain, and in my opinion, it would be equally foolish to dismiss the _possibility_ of a breakthrough that would get us much closer to general AI (for instance if someone came up with some kind of short-term / long-term memory mechanism that works well)
I personally think that the main reason why general AI may be very far away is because there is little incentive today for working on it. Specialized AI seemss good enough to drive cars. Specialized AI should be good enough to put objects in boxes, cut vegetables and flip burgers and so on, and the economical impact of building that is much greater than the economical impact of making a robot that barely passes the turing test and that's otherwise fairly dumb or ethically unbounded.
I personally think that the main reason why general AI may be very far away is because there is little incentive today for working on it. Specialized AI seemss good enough to drive cars. Specialized AI should be good enough to put objects in boxes, cut vegetables and flip burgers and so on, and the economical impact of building that is much greater than the economical impact of making a robot that barely passes the turing test and that's otherwise fairly dumb or ethically unbounded.