"if it can match human cognitive capabilities"....It doesn't take that much to outperform the average human being in a wide variety of tasks. But where was the incentive for the AI to do anything at all implemented? Unlike life there's no intrinsic motivation for the AI to "live" or evolve unless it was placed there. Humans seem evolved due to the variety of expression that our brains gives us but it's still just a distant abstraction of sustaining and continuing life. The curiosity of exploring your environment gives pleasant emotional feedback which increases the chance of survival but it's buried so deep inside that humans think they're detached from it.