If all of the things that humans can do are required for knitting and driving cars, than there are two things that humans can do, generalized to that level. If an AI could learn the hard way to drive and to knit, it would be able to do everything a human could do. I estimate that controlling vehicles is about four different skills by that definition (road vehicles, fixed-wing, rotary-wing, and reaction-mass spacecraft), but knitting, crocheting, and sewing are the same skill, and there are probably only two or three different skills that cover all of athletics (an AI that could learn to play football would probably be able to learn curling, but it might not be able to learn gymnastics or swiming)
I think that our existing AIs haven't demonstrated that they can learn to do anything the hard way. I could be wrong, because I don't have any deep insight into if existing AIs learn or are created with full knowledge.
AIs haven't demonstrated that they can learn to do anything the hard way
The tasks pointed out so far (driving, knitting, sports) all have a huge mechanical component, where a body and its parts (the wheels of the car, the needle, whatever actuators your athletes have) are steered to make certain motions. Tasks like that use control theory, maybe with a learned kinematic model, and some reinforcement learning.
But that's a shallow representation of those tasks. There is much more to each of them than the motions. For instance with real car driving, you w...
OK, so it covers only a few human occupations:
But the list is steadily growing.
Now, connect it with a self-driving AI, and your cab e-driver can make small talk, advise on a suspicious skin lesion, evaluate your investment portfolio and help you fix an issue with your smartphone, all while cheaply and efficiently getting you to your destination.
How long until it can evaluate verbal or written customer requirements and write better routine software than your average programmer?