There's a huge difference: no natural process that was observed by alchemists acted as a philosophers stone. They sought to find one, but never did. On the othe

There's a huge difference: no natural process that was observed by alchemists acted as a philosophers stone. They sought to find one, but never did. On the other hand I can observe intelligence in the sentence you have written, and maybe you can observe intelligence in this one that I have written. Natural intelligence does exist, the questions are how does it work, and what are the barriers to it existing in other substrates. AI doesn't have to try to create intelligence to answer well posed scientific questions - the alchemists didn't get to that point until people started building nuclear reactors.