I am not sure that is a good translation because it completely misses a common idiom: "within spitting distance"

"spitting the distance from the performance of the human level"

If this were spoken out loud, it might get mistaken for "splitting the distance" which seems to have a different meaning (half as good as humans).

But the point is subtle differences matter a lot in human communication.

But, I do agree with your point that in a lot of cases even without human-level performance one can get things done.