I know that's just supposed to be a piece of folky wisdom but it doesn't represent a very good understanding of how different AI is from our normal expectations

I know that's just supposed to be a piece of folky wisdom but it doesn't represent a very good understanding of how different AI is from our normal expectations. It's not Data on Startrek. There's no reason for them to be walking around talking. You plug it directly into whatever you want it to understand: weather readings, big data sets, etc. You can 'program' it just as fast as it's processors allow it to consume. The analogy is how humans understand language or music although it's still far more direct. Humans don't represent a upper bound on intelligence. The question isn't a computer as smart as a human, it's one several orders of magnitude faster or slower than one.