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You think I will be surprised how "general" the AIs are. I think you will be surprised how similar to human bodies you have to make them for them to approach a human definition of "general".
This is the only sense in which I think AGIs are impossible... not that they couldn't be fabricated, but that they would be functionally indistinguishable from a human with access to some good subroutines.
> Seeing will eventually be believing. Once made manifest, you won't be able to deny its plausibility.
I look forward to it. I say the same thing about my own work all the time, of which many people are incredulous. But still, you must admit that doomsday prophets say the same kind of thing. Again, please don't take that as disbelief, just not-yet-belief.
Regarding the specifics of the models, I would humbly submit this (as old as I am) paper on Ecological Psychology as a good, usable alternative to the information processing model of cognition: http://www.trincoll.edu/~wmace/publications/realism.pdf. If you don't want to wade through the high philosophy stuff, pages 194-209 get into more concrete specifics of the model they are proposing.
To me it seems fundamentally different than the I/O based picture my OP proposed. I would be interested to hear your perspective. And hit me up if you ever feel like coming out to Oakland to chat with a fellow crazy person with a passing knowledge of cognitive science and quantum mechanics. I would love to buy you a coffee.