I agree that there's some aspect of volition, desire, the creative process...whatever you want to call that aspect of human thought that seems to arise de novo.

I agree that there's some aspect of volition, desire, the creative process...whatever you want to call that aspect of human thought that seems to arise de novo. But speaking of de novo, I'm not at all sure that a desire to think a thought it required in order to think. The opposite seems closer: the less one tries to think, the more one ends up thinking. I'm pivoting from your point here, but I see that bit as the hurdle we're not close to overcoming. We are likely missing huge pieces of the puzzle when it comes to understanding human "intelligence" (and intelligence itself is not the full picture). With such a limited understanding, a replication or full superseding in the near future seems unlikely. Perhaps the blind spot of the experts, as /u/leftyted alluded to, is that their modest success so far has generated a reality-distorting hubris.