In practical terms, the result doesn’t matter. The race to approximate the human thought process and call it AGI (which is what matters economically) is on. If you can approximate it meaningfully faster that the real brain works in meatspace, you are winning. What it will mean for humanity or civilization is an open question.
The race to approximate the human thought process and call it AGI (which is what matters economically) is on
Maybe I'm just being pedantic, but I'd argue that there's no particular reason to say that AGI involves "approximating the human thought process". That is, what matters is the result, not the process. IF one can find another way to "get there" in a completely different manner than the human mind, then great.
That said, obviously there is some appeal to the "mimic human thought" approach since human thought is currently an existence proof that the kind of intelligence we are talking about is possible at all and mimicking that does seem like an obvious path to try.
That's one possible inference. However, it would also be consistent to claim that there is a fundamentally uncomputable and impossible-to-artificially-replicate "mechanism" underlying human intelligence.
I don't think it even needs to be faster, if you can make an artificial brain that's useful even if it's 100x slower, you can always run stuff in parallel.
Even that isn't needed. A "general intelligence" separable from ethics and rights is valuable in itself. It's valuable to subjugate, as long as the subjugated object is producing more than they are consuming.
In practical terms, the result doesn’t matter. The race to approximate the human thought process and call it AGI (which is what matters economically) is on. If you can approximate it meaningfully faster that the real brain works in meatspace, you are winning. What it will mean for humanity or civilization is an open question.