It seems, in practice, that a robot is what we abstractly imagine, but once implemented in the concrete, it's demystified and everybody goes, "Oh that? That's just a machine".
Anyway, I immediately though of this concept you've described: Artificial Intelligence is an abstract imagine, once implemented it's just "branch prediction", or some such.
0 - http://www.electronicdesign.com/microprocessors/ai-helps-amd...