I guess. I'm not sure we can justify drawing that arbitrary line just because we want novelty in synthetic intelligence but little novelty in protein production. And I don't really think 2 billion more years of evolution is going to produce they kind of intelligences most people around here are expecting to see in the next couple hundred years.

Part of the reason people like the prospects for better intelligence is that we can identify really obvious ways in which our's could be improved. I wonder if there are systematic errors made in cellular mechanics.