The thing is you don't have to get AI to emulate the human brain, NOTHING can do that, only the human brain will EVER act like the human brain. We will eventually be able to create faxsimiles of some human brain functions though, at least enough to process information from it's raw form into a symoblized set. Say a vision system capable of determining the shape of an object, and from a set library determine if it was a chair, a car, a blue chair, a red car. an object shaped like a chair that's blue with some red, a car with a red body and orange stripes etc.. etc.. ad infinum. Properly network weighted logic systems (I hate to use the term fuzzy logic because it is so abused) can already do this and more, to greater or lesser degrees of reliability and sophistication. It's only a matter of time before there are language feedback systems that allow one computer to compile an image into a set of symbols and transfer it to another computer that is capable of reconstructing the basic scene from the descriptive language into a visual one. Basically forming a feedback system roughly equivilant to the human ability to imagine. Adding more computers to the system and various nodes of sensor and data storage and processing entire networks will begin to form that can produce 'inteligent' actions from it's raw sensor input and some intermediary stages. Weather or not this will ever actually occur is more a matter of our social structures instability rather than technical ability. It will at our present course only take time. And not likley within our lifetimes will we see inteligence in computers more than a young child or chipanse. Although A.I. will over time more significantly impact our interactions with our perceived reality, more in an augmentive way rather than as a seperate entitity.. that will change people as well. Various methods of networked communication have already started to change the way people interact with one another on varying levels, some dramatic.