Computers remain far short of human intelligence, but the resources that aid AI design are accumulating (including hardware, large datasets, neuroscience knowledge, and AI theory). We may one day design a machine that surpasses human skill at designing artificial intelligences. After that, this machine could improve its own intelligence faster and better than humans can, which would make it even more skilled at improving its own intelligence. This could continue in a positive feedback loop such that the machine quickly becomes vastly more intelligent than the smartest human being on Earth: an 'intelligence explosion' resulting in a machine superintelligence (Good 1965).

It is worth noting that the correct story is of a man-machine symbiosis - with the human part gradually diminishing, and the machine part gradually rising - through the well-known process of automation.

In this context, contrasting machine ability with that of unmodified humans seems silly and irrelevant. Humans have not been designing computers "on their own" for decades. Rather, there's a man-machine symbiosis.

The difference between these two pictures really matters. A symbiosis in which the humans decline gradually results in a different growth curve from one in which computers reach "human level" and then suddenly "take off". The second picture - while naive and inaccurate - is good for scaring small children with. I'm sure we don't want to be scaring small children with fabricated stories.