"Hopefully machine learning techniques give us some sort of building blocks for a general intelligence."
"Hopefully knowledge graphs give us some sort of building blocks for a general intelligence."
"Hopefully Bayesian models give us some sort of building blocks for a general intelligence."
"Hopefully rule-based systems give us some sort of building blocks for a general intelligence."
"Hopefully LISP gives us some sort of building blocks for a general intelligence."
"Hopefully computers give us some sort of building blocks for a general intelligence."
People have said approximations to all of these over time. All of these probably are building blocks. But there's no reason to believe that we're about to build the top of the tower.
I believe we should understand AI in terms of what it can do for us now, and that AGI keeps appearing to be 50 years away because it's actually centuries away and we don't even understand what we don't understand yet.