Turing proposed an experiment in which a person and a machine are placed in a darkened room. Someone outside the room asks questions that are answered by either the person or by the machine. Turing's proposition was that over the years, we could develop a machine, using artificial intelligence, so that the person outside the room will have difficulty determining if the responses are from man or machine. The question as to whether we have achieved such computing power is under debate. People simply are not interested in building such a machine.
Intellectual pursuit is one thing but business viability is an altogether different issue.
Government funding of research is a bone of contention in the House of Commons. The ubiquitous question of why should there so much spending on, say, sending a spacecraft to Jupiter, forced the Government to rethink on its expenditures on fundamental research. Organizations cannot sustain themselves without research. In an era where innovation is key, organizations should encourage research to serve their parochial interests, if nothing else. If they do not innovate, their competitors will leave them behind.