[ballark]

Drones are programmed by numbers and take action in the real world. Some ML-based AI analyze sets of data and perform actions in the real world.

Brains do what? Read signals in different strengths and patterns to take actions in the world.

I'm confused by you thinking there's some great impossibility of code achieving general intelligence. Maybe you're thinking of sentience, or consciousness and view that as an impossibility for AI. I say - an AI can perform actions in the real world as if it were generally intelligent, and whether there's sentience behind really doesn't matter so much from the point of view of humans.