Possibly, but also possible you are prematurely overestimating the constraints and limiting the abilities and knowledge of a civilisation presumably hundreds of

Possibly, but also possible you are prematurely overestimating the constraints and limiting the abilities and knowledge of a civilisation presumably hundreds of years ahead of us at a minimum. Countering your other reply, I acknowledge physics limitations like the maximum speed are unlikely to change, but see no reason for similar constraints on progress in self-replicating intelligence (apart from our current understanding of technologies involved like AI, which IMO is vastly overhyped). By "machine intelligence", I meant AI (a term I don't like), but see no reason why it should be constrained to metal chips and boxes as it might be using our current technology.