Thanks for your thoughtful insights, A-G.
On the subject of artificial intelligence: If AI ("strong" or other) is being modeled on a machine analogy, then one wonders what kind of progress can be made. Living, conscious, thinking beings are not "machines": For a machine is a unity of order, and not of substance. Kefatos/Nadeau write: "Artifacts or machines are...constructed from without, and the whole is simply the assemblage of all parts." And the order that exists in any machine is external to its parts.
But increasingly, science is telling us that the part-whole relationship in living, conscious, thinking beings is an entirely different affair. As Ernst Mayr wrote, living systems "almost always have the peculiarity that the characteristics of the whole cannot (not even in theory) be deduced from the most complete knowledge of components, taken separately or in other partial combinations. This appearance of new characteristics in wholes has been designated emergence."
This is what I have referred to in the past as "irreducible complexity." The order of the living being is emergent "from within," not imposed "from without."
If we want to build "thinking machines," then this would seem to represent a daunting logistical problem.
Similarly, those who would say that God (understood as some kind of collective consciousness) can be "translated" as "force" likewise may be using the "wrong model" -- in more ways than one.
We can. Plain, raw matter has the basic stuff we need. The machine will not think on a high level like . . . ahem . . . we do. The ability to think is latent in organized matter such as atoms. The property of thought or consciousness as we think of it emerges unexpectedly in higher, i.e. less organized matter, that is, individual living creature, but it is potential in organized, that is homogenous, randomly perfect organizations such as the sun.
It is most curious that "what is life" is not addressed by science. Biology studies it exhaustively, evolution theory proposes how it might have come to appear the way it does ... but the issue of what "it" is - is not tackled scientifically as we would expect.
Since I've linked this article a number of times, I imagine you've already read it - but it may be interesting to Lurkers to determine the state of the art in knowing what "life" is:
A fine point in an excellent post that adds clarity to the debate.