I know what you mean, but I think we're still at the zygote-stage of A.I.
When I go to Google and type "Where can I buy a hamburger", Google is completely useless -- but I do see 4 instances of the same Steve Martin comedy sketch from Youtube. It turns out all search engines absolutely suck for giving reasonable answers to reasonable questions. There is an enormous amount of room for innovation, and if there is innovation going on, it simply isn't making news, and it doesn't appear to be getting the kind of investment attention it should.
The point being made here is that we are still unable to build programs which interpret language nearly as effectively as the human brain. Our programs still have little skill in determining context in language - which will be an important step in reaching Kurzweillian levels of computing competence.
However, it should be noted that Natural Language Processing and studies in word sense disambiguation have brought us closer, people still cherish the "Dude, where's my flying car" impatience of technology.
The flip side is that if you type just 'hamburger' into maps.google.com, you'll likely get a map of all the hamburger stands near your present location (based on either GPS or your IP address).
I'd argue that this is pretty damn smart, and it is way ahead of where we were 10 years ago.
When I go to Google and type "Where can I buy a hamburger", Google is completely useless -- but I do see 4 instances of the same Steve Martin comedy sketch from Youtube. It turns out all search engines absolutely suck for giving reasonable answers to reasonable questions. There is an enormous amount of room for innovation, and if there is innovation going on, it simply isn't making news, and it doesn't appear to be getting the kind of investment attention it should.