I didn't say quantum computing magically reduced anything. You've set up a strawman and proceeded to beat it with a hammer. I said that quantum computers can solve previously-intractable problems.

We don't know what steps are necessary to reach AI, so we don't know what is or isn't a necessary step. Vision is a tiny part of cognition, as evidenced by the fact that there are fish which have no vision (or at least no human-like vision) since they live in absence of light. Yet they are alive: they reproduce, they seek food, they think, they do all of the things a living creature does, except see light.

You're confusing computing performance intractability with conceptual intractability. Shor doesn't do anything new for AI, it just speeds things up.

Never would I have guessed that saying "Quantum computing may open up new avenues of exploration" would be so controversial.

I said quantum computing makes previously-intractable problems tractable, and that it's therefore interesting for AI. I used Shor's algorithm as an example of a problem which could not be solved on a classical computer, but could be solved on a quantum computer, not as an example of a new AI problem.