First off, I agree with your general message that getting an AGI is very very very hard and that we are no where close. That said, however, we do already know

First off, I agree with your general message that getting an AGI is very very very hard and that we are no where close. That said, however, we do already know quite a bit about how neural nets work, both biological and artificial. One of the things we know is that they are most certainly not a Turing machine -- they are associative memory machines. That is, memory and processing are one and the same. Most (all?) current artificial neural nets have fixed interconnects between neurons. One thing we do know is that biological brains change which neurons connect to which other neurons. And as far as I'm aware, we don't know how that's done or what drives it except in the most general terms. This lack of plasticity (not sure if that's the appropriate term) in artificial neural nets is, IMO, a major blockage in the road to an AGI.. IMO, "intelligence" is an emergent of a complex, malleable, neural network that has been exposed to the right environment. I suspect both are necessary. And finally, we don't need an AGI as "smart" as humans (we have plenty of humans, after all). But even one as "smart" as a bright dog would be very useful. I don't think most religious people think dogs have souls, so I don't see how souls are an issue.