AI, on the other hand, is not so simple, and to try to simplify it to that point is not going to create any productive discussion on the reality of AI.
The movies about these kinds of things are made to entertain, not to teach us about AI.
I agree with you, however it's not impossible. Simplification is needed on the carrier level that houses such AI.
Movies are a great way to let our minds wander and dream to forget about the gaps in technology. Then some breakthrough happens and in a few years the yesterdays impossible sci-fi dream becomes a boring shiny toy.
> but parsing the real world and deriving intentions from your understanding of it is a light year away. 300 years is a guess; no one has a clue any more than anyone has an idea about an interstellar drive.
They need to filter the real world as we do. Focus, attention, sleeping, dreaming, chasing rewards, staying alive... we do this without effort, but we've had 150k years (counting from first homo sapiens) to train our brains to filter out noise efficiently and act on meaningful signals.