> progression has been amazing, but we're still a long ways away from the primary capabilities of even a house cat

I'm in complete agreement with your point about how amazing things we consider "basic" are. But (using your post as a chance to soapbox) we need to remember that we're not TRYING to match the primary capabilities of a cat (or humans). In part, because we know little about how thought and instinct work on a useful level, but we know more about flowchart-style logic. And as I understand them (which isn't much), even the deeper neural work doesn't try to emulate biological thought. Instead, we focus on a _goal_ where we get a result similar to biological thought and try different (complex) ways of mixing deterministic logic to get there.

Everything is still rudimentary, but going forward I expect that AI (or any of the various related fields often lumped as AI) will do remarkable things beyond biological capability long before certain "basic" (as you say, actually amazing) things. And I don't mean just super-logic or strong memorization - we already have that - I mean they will "think" from thought A to thought B easily (e.g. 'I've read this book before' leads to 'an accountable monarchy is the best system of rule'), while we struggle to do the same, while we can make the A to C conclusion easily ('I like green' leading to 'I need to mow the lawn') that AI finds harder to accomplish or even understand enough to predict.

Biology is messy - just a few days ago we had an article on here about how social comfort makes us warmer...and in reverse, raising the temperature makes us feel more befriended. We have bizarre social rules at some level imprinted into our DNA - Tall people, pretty people, they will find success. Mob mentality, mass hallucination, zealotry, we have "work" and "fun" as mostly separate areas. Being fit is healthy, but becoming/staying fit is emotionally difficult. Our memories are ridiculously unreliable - our impressions and desires shape interpretation, and then continue to reshape the memories on each recall. We categorize thoughts down into intellectual and emotional. Change blindness, desiring comfort but pretending it is ideology, getting defensive when proven or even suggested to be wrong, conspiracy theories, all drama, fiction, gender, parody, humor itself, sleep, xenophobia, celebrities, luxury goods, clowns, desire to get intoxicated, placebos, psychological schema, "I'm not a snitch", ...the list goes on.

We (humans) tend to think there are two options: human-like thought, and cold predictable logic (witness almost every sentient computer in media...including popular science journalism). We don't think "huh, the complexity and history of our biological systems has resulted in all these surprising connections. I bet a non-biological system complex enough to "think" will have it's own surprising connections because of a totally different structure, physics, and background." They will be surprising because their way of thinking will be something we cannot wrap our brains around unable to emulate because it is literally contrary to the physical way we think. AI will not be simple and unable to process "this statement is false" - but they might find that hilarious. Or perhaps it gives a result similar to horror. Or it isn't worth much attention...but too many such statements is like dirt under your fingernails. Who knows? I only know that expecting an early AI to have the capabilities of a child is most likely self-deceptive.

I don't know when AI as generally thought of will exist. I don't know if it will prove the salvation/destruction/entertainment of humanity. I fully expect it will be very weird from a human perspective, with different strengths, weaknesses, and quirks. I also expect that humanity en masse will translate this collection as "inferior", because our brains say we should be skeptical of "different").