So, how long until we get AI on par with humans, actually able to have "independent" thought? Right now, the best chatbots cannot hold a conversation because they respond to everything you say as if it were a completely new person talking to them. And what form would such an AI take? Would it be mainly coded and constructed manually, or would it be done via a neural net and deep learning algorithms?

I find AI to be the most exiting development currently happening in science but it just seems so slow. I really want to experience talking to true AI before I die in the next seventy or so years