There’s an early season TNG episode in which a race called the “Binars” upgrade the Enterprise-D’s computer, and as a result Picard and Riker are amazed at how the Holodeck is now creating much more real-seeming characters. So making an AGI in the TNG era that can pass the Turing Test does seem to be a rare and difficult thing, although a ship’s computer apparently does have hardware capable of generating one. So part of Dr. Soong’s achievement also seems to be making a non-evil AGI that runs on hardware that can fit in a human-sized body instead of a ship-sized one.
There’s an early season TNG episode in which a race called the “Binars” upgrade the Enterprise-D’s computer, and as a result Picard and Riker are amazed at how the Holodeck is now creating much more real-seeming characters. So making an AGI in the TNG era that can pass the Turing Test does seem to be a rare and difficult thing, although a ship’s computer apparently does have hardware capable of generating one. So part of Dr. Soong’s achievement also seems to be making a non-evil AGI that runs on hardware that can fit in a human-sized body instead of a ship-sized one.