It is just a guess. Human thought, although highly complex, is in my opinion something actually feasible to be simulated. If I had a large research budget under my control, I would be betting most of it on AGI.

No one can really predict the future. But given the number of times AI pessimists have been proven wrong in recent years and the massive increase in AI investment, my best guess is that truly human-level artificial general intelligence is in fact around the corner.

Considering what a large impact this will have, we must take that possibility seriously. Not to do so would be foolish.

AIs can play chess, recognize speech consistently, drive cars, win at Jeopardy and now Go. Deep Mind has some general capabilities. We must anticipate programs with even more general intelligence.