It's not possible at our current levels of understanding. Forget about AI, and step it back to things we've been collectively trying to understand for hundreds of years:
Dominant models of economics don't work, we don't understand consciousness, or understand human motivations with much clarity (e.g. what causes people to become entrepreneurs).
AI would be built on models, yet how do we model the complex biologically-derived survival instincts and biases that have evolved in us over hundreds of years? It has to be impossible unless the AI has a biological component as models aren't reality. Yet our emotions are the underlying - often subconscious - drivers of our actions.
Even your phrasing. There is no "median human", and how could there be? To calculate a median relies on variables, yet the number of variables is practically infinite leading to different "medians" depending on the input variables.
Toning down expectations - e.g. to avoid aiming for capability "in all tasks" - is likely to lead to great benefits, but without a biological component I just can't imagine AI ever reaching the levels you mention. It currently can't "learn", only infer, combine, replicate and predict patterns.
In general, for the last 200 years we've thrown out the importance of consciousness hoping to find mechanical explanations for the universe and complex phenomena such as financial markets and economics. But those models just don't work. Fortunately progress is being made with studies into biases, e.g. behavioural finance & economics. Yet their potential for leading to prediction is still questionable, at both individiual and group levels.
So I think the goal of non-biological AI is fundamentally impossible since it's based on a flawed premise of mechanical humans interacting in a mechanical universe.
Dominant models of economics don't work, we don't understand consciousness, or understand human motivations with much clarity (e.g. what causes people to become entrepreneurs).
AI would be built on models, yet how do we model the complex biologically-derived survival instincts and biases that have evolved in us over hundreds of years? It has to be impossible unless the AI has a biological component as models aren't reality. Yet our emotions are the underlying - often subconscious - drivers of our actions.
Even your phrasing. There is no "median human", and how could there be? To calculate a median relies on variables, yet the number of variables is practically infinite leading to different "medians" depending on the input variables.
Toning down expectations - e.g. to avoid aiming for capability "in all tasks" - is likely to lead to great benefits, but without a biological component I just can't imagine AI ever reaching the levels you mention. It currently can't "learn", only infer, combine, replicate and predict patterns.
In general, for the last 200 years we've thrown out the importance of consciousness hoping to find mechanical explanations for the universe and complex phenomena such as financial markets and economics. But those models just don't work. Fortunately progress is being made with studies into biases, e.g. behavioural finance & economics. Yet their potential for leading to prediction is still questionable, at both individiual and group levels.
So I think the goal of non-biological AI is fundamentally impossible since it's based on a flawed premise of mechanical humans interacting in a mechanical universe.