We can say with some confidence that we know how to do something even if it hasn't yet been reduced to practice or yet practially demonstrated.
Right, I'm objecting to the claim that
pockets and conviction deep enough to create it.
are included by definition when we say "general intelligence". (That, or I'm totally misunderstanding you.)
You must be misunderstanding me, because what you just said seems like a total non-sequitur. What does pockets and deep conviction have to do with general intelligence indeed?
An Article on Motherboard reports about Alien Minds by Susan Schneider who claiThe Dominant Life Form In the Cosmos Is Probably Superintelligent Robots. The article is crosslinked to other posts about superintelligence and at the end discusses the question why these alien robots leave us along. The arguments puts forth on this don't convince me though.