For me, the real question of interest is not about that kind of intelligence, but of "awareness". Computers may process environmental information and perform all sorts of logical operations based on it. But there is zero reason to think that any computer has any awareness whatsoever. It has no experience. There is something it is like to experience the color yellow, as opposed to merely classifying observed light as being of a certain wavelength; no computer has begun, in any way, to make that leap.
It seems like a lot of people, including the author, don't even notice that this is a question. They seem to assume that computer-like information processing is all that happens in a human mind, and that awareness itself doesn't even exist as something to ponder. So they equate any doubt about whether a computer can do what we do as a form of vitalism.
But with just a little bit of introspection, the fact that there is something it is like to experience the color yellow, as opposed to classifying a visual stimulus as being of a certain wavelength, or logically classifying it as having the attribute of "yellowness", is absolutely clear -- and absolutely fundamental to our existence as human beings (although many would assume that many other forms of life also have this basic ability to experience, if not the same ability to process information in computer-like ways).
This is why, for me, the Turing Test is orthogonal to the question of whether a machine is actually conscious. I have no problem imagining that a software system, even on hardware that is basically the same as what we have now but bigger and faster, will one day be able to pass the Turing Test. But that doesn't prove it has any experience of the color yellow; it merely means it can mimic the output of an entity that does.