I am also in no way an expert, but I would not say it is "really a hardware problem". There is already serious research going on neuromorphic computing, but you

I am also in no way an expert, but I would not say it is "really a hardware problem". There is already serious research going on neuromorphic computing, but you have to know what hardware to build and how to actually use / train / evolve it. We are trying to imitate our brains and each single neuron has very rich dynamics. Then you have a general graph with 80 billions of them, and this network also interacts with and is regulated by another network of chemical reactions... One could maybe give up understanding and build a fairly generalized evolutionary process, but that hardware could end up needing a degree of flexibility that would make it either closer to a biological brain grown in a lab or something much closer to a conventional computer...