Jeff Hawkins is a huge proponent of strong AI, and I strongly encourage anyone interested in the subject to read his 2004 book, On Intelligence. In it he makes

Jeff Hawkins is a huge proponent of strong AI, and I strongly encourage anyone interested in the subject to read his 2004 book, On Intelligence. In it he makes several cogent points about the future of true AI, a lot of which hit on points brought up in the article. He discusses the origin of thought and imagination as simulations, which is in line with the article. He sees this in a different light, however: not only are simulations necessary for brains to produce thought, but they are achievable given the right computational system. He also argues that embodiment may not (and in his view, likely won't) take a humanlike form, Rather the AI, like a human, will be able to plastically adapt to new senses (say, weather sensors) to understand the world in a way we can't even fathom.