@Skybird: I think you got it all wrong. It's just a pity that we are both not going to see it
Artificial intelligence is still out several centuries, but it is inevitable. I expect it will be of the "island" type and never model a complete human personality because that would create insuperable problems (what if the computer personality is more advanced than any human?) and be very expensive.
First of all, your arguments are basically a conglomerate of the technophobe backlash that came about after the science fiction utopia of 50's had failed. And evidently around the 80's and 90's we were not making any significant progress towards artificial intelligence, which seems to take the burden of proof from your argument.
But neither is true. We cannot simulate such complex processes easily, neither is there any reason why we could not do it - in the future. It's going to take much more time than people expected, because the human brain is so powerful. Don't forget that evolution needed millions of years to create human intelligence, so we cannot do it in 50 years.
Just take todays computer technology, multiply it by several thousands (or possibly millions, who knows that) and there is going to be a certain threshold when the computer is going to reach and finally overtake human decision capability. This is still far out in the future, I would say at least hundred years, probably more.
If you want to call that intelligence is another question, but for me it is, I can also accept that for you it is not. Maybe it has to do with you being a (latently) religious person and not accepting that the human brain is a biochemical computer (an extremely powerful one). I am a software engineer, and I don't see any difference, just that todays computers cannot even achieve the intelligence of an insect, but they are already getting damn close.
But as I said, none of us is going to see it. And after seeing the disturbing images of a (completely harmless) roboter like big dog, I guess that this could actually be a blessing. We could be creating our own doom, just as science fiction writers have predicted.