I don't know much about the field, but from what I've heard, I wouldn't be too surprised if proving P != NP is harder than building FAI for the unaided human mind

Well actually, after thinking about it, I'm not sure I would either. There is something special about P vs NP, from what I understand, and I didn't even mean to imply otherwise above; I was only disputing the idea that "vast amounts" of work had already gone into the problem, for my definition of "vast".

Scott Aaronson's view on this doesn't move my opinion much (despite his large contribution to my beliefs about P vs NP), since I think he overestimates the difficulty of AGI (see your Bloggingheads diavlog with him).