[dquail]

80 years is very conservative. Rich Sutton has a very well articulated argument for achieving human level hardware (using Moores law, and an estimate of the computational power of the brain derived from measurable computations in the eye (retina?).

But as you said, it's the algorithms that are by far the long pole. Current supervised learning is much akin to simple rote learning. This is the promise of reinforcement learning - and the ability to truly learn on your own through experience. That's scalable. *that said ... I'm biased being one of Rich's students :(