[stu_]

I don't think folks in academia are anywhere near the cutting edge on AGI. It's not a field that is advanced by things like particle accelerators as you might find in physics, that some unis are famous for.

Look at the work result of folks like engineers at Google - state of the art in AI and driving most of the trends in AGI. Academic opinions are shot down quite quickly there, PhD hiring is mostly frowned on, even in teams working on AGI related tech.

It might be expected that PhD experience provides surprising little insight here unfortunately. Academic smugness is not something that should be offered as part of an opinion- just like many computer science related concepts, progress moves so quickly in these topics that by the time academics reach and start to iterate on concepts, companies have already moved very far beyond.

This isn't intended to be condescending to academics, just real life experience I've had working closely with both crowds and seeing this firsthand. It's a very palpable thing in industry, an Academic gives an opinion on AGI and engineers roll their eyes - since Academic perspectives are currently so useless or out of date for any current, meaningful progress.