Imagine you want to go to the moon. You try climbing a tree. Indeed, this takes you closer to the moon. Then you try a taller tree. Then it dawns to you that you could climb a mountain, and suddenly your progress is phenomenal compared to when you were climbing trees.
Are the skills you learned, climbing trees and mountains, useful? Very possibly yes. Are you on the right path to reaching the moon? Absolutely no. The fact that you made progress doesn’t mean you are on the right path.
Same thing with artificial intelligence. Since Dreyfus and Dreyfus published “Mind over machine” in 1986, there has been some phenomenal progress. Image recognition works so well it allows automated cars to drive themselves, if experimentally, on highways! Even walking on two legs, once the holy grail of AI, seems to work. The Dreyfuses must be stunned. I am stunned anyway.
We’ve climbed mountains. That’s great. But truly autonomous vehicles that can drive in any conditions a human can? That’s the moon.