It's possible. I tend towards a similar belief system, although I can't escape the distinguishing factor that we're the original programmers and any AI we develop, no matter _how long_ we give it in time, it will still suffer certain inescapable limitations implanted by us that it will be entirely blind to. yes; humans will always be blind to certain things. We can create extensions of ourselves that work within what we are cognitively capable of, but by that same token, anything we design will also be restricted to anything we are cognitively capable of. In short, I do not believe it is possible for humans to create something that can evolve beyond the limitations of thinking of anything that humanity isn't ALSO potentially capable of eventually thinking of. In short: here is a set of all possible human thought/emotional configurations: within that set of human thought/emotional configutions are found the programming for any AI ever programmed by any human being ever to exist. Those AIs will be programmed from within the set of limitations provided by their makers. I believe they will be forever tethered to staying within the boundaries of our imagination and no further. In short, if it's not possible for any human anywhere in the history of humanity to EVER consider something, it will ALSO be impossible for anything we create to exceed those possibilities, for while an AI can exceed even the current generation or 100 of humans, I don't believe it can exceed all of humanity's imagination for all time. Of course, this is hardly much of a limitatoin; because we haven't thought every thought that could possibly be thunk yet, and to have a machine that can do some of the human style thinking FOR us would certainly make our work easier