> it does highlight the stark gulf that exists between the capability of the most advanced AI systems and what we expect as "normal competency" from the most average person

Yes, but now we're at the point where we can compare AI to a person, whereas five years ago the gap was so big that that was just unthinkable.

I mean people thought ELIZA was AI back in the 1960's. Everyone always thinks "this is it!!".

> people thought ELIZA

But which people? Those people which show that a supplement of extra intelligence, also synthetic, is sought.

It was. The definition of "AI" keeps shifting.

Love me some good old whataboutism (sure, LLMs are now super-intelligent at writing software, but can they clean my kitchen? No? Ha!)

The computer beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kickboxing. - Emo Phillips

Tale as old as time. We can make nice software systems but general purpose AI / Agents isn't here yet.

Worse than that: it seems that it's much easier to make computer achieve superhuman feats in cognitive work, than it is to make it do even most basic physical interactions with the real world.

In short: the natural order of things is that computers are better at thinking, and people are better at manual labor. Which is the opposite of what we wanted.

AI is just hydraulics for the mind. Or should be.

I choose a direction and apply force.