Evolution only had to get it right once, so in an infinite universe, anthropic selection, etc. This overlooks a more significant fact: ontogeny gets it right over and over again, regularly, predictably, reproducibly. Somehow, starting from just a few tens of thousands of genes and their cellular support structures, in which no intelligence is discernable, brains develop that respond to the environment around them by organising themselves into thinking beings. The same thing happens on a lesser scale with the chimpanzees, and dogs, and even insects.
How does it happen? Nobody knows. That the mechanism has been brought into existence at all can be an anthropically selected fluke, but once it exists, how it works is not a fluke but a repeatable process.
Reverse engineer the process, and you will be well on the way to creating an AGI.
ETA: It occurs to me that I don’t know how often evolution has invented neurons. Just once, or more than that? It’s certainly invented eyes more than once.
Evolution only had to get it right once, so in an infinite universe, anthropic selection, etc. This overlooks a more significant fact: ontogeny gets it right over and over again, regularly, predictably, reproducibly. Somehow, starting from just a few tens of thousands of genes and their cellular support structures, in which no intelligence is discernable, brains develop that respond to the environment around them by organising themselves into thinking beings. The same thing happens on a lesser scale with the chimpanzees, and dogs, and even insects.
How does it happen? Nobody knows. That the mechanism has been brought into existence at all can be an anthropically selected fluke, but once it exists, how it works is not a fluke but a repeatable process.
Reverse engineer the process, and you will be well on the way to creating an AGI.
ETA: It occurs to me that I don’t know how often evolution has invented neurons. Just once, or more than that? It’s certainly invented eyes more than once.