My belief, from the research I've done, is that true general intelligence, is actually a universal translation algo. An underlying self-organizing swarm-intelligence-evolutionary algorithm that crafts algorithms to recognize patterns in visual data, sound data, etc. What people are actually simulating in many cases is the end result of the work done by the underlying algo. Translating from one domain into another, from what is seen, to what is heard, from what is felt(digital signals, or spikes coming from sensory neurons.),to what is thought, to what is done, that is actions.Nefastor, I'm still very skeptical of AI. I'm sure AI will become quite advanced over the next decades, but when it comes to mimicking the human mind, it just still seems so implausible. What i mean is their pursuit of their own interests, those not programmed in there. I'm sure we can design algorithms where they'll pursue certain interests based on probabilities, which themselves would be based on preset data (which one could call hereditary) and the data they interpret from their given subjective reality. The next level, however, is that represented in the movie "AI: Artificial Intelligence" by that little boy. The pursuit of a dream and underlying meanings, or more importantly imagination. I suppose one could call this the "Ghost in the Shell". I will always see AI, until proven otherwise, as either the implementation of expert systems, or merely algorithms designed to reflect the human psyche on a surface level. But it is just that to me, they would never pursue their own interests unless programmed in a certain manner, but that persona itself would be programmed.
With that said, I must say I'm not very knowledgeable in AI, I have yet to take my first course in it, but i have developed my own programs and spend a lot of time developing algorithms in my head to see how they could be implemented . So any insights would be greatly appreciated.
Each chunk of neural tissue has to handle the patterns generated by other chunks of neural tissue, and yield an appropriate response. Of course the whole collection of tissue and what is accomplished in a human brain as a whole, trascends the mere implementation of general intelligence code, there's lots of stuff specifically custom made by evolution for the goal of survival and reproduction that leads to goal oriented behavior in response to signals.
Code that can write code, prove theorems, etc. code that permits the evolution of memes or ideas and is implemented in the rules that the cells(machines) that compose the brain follow. Variations of this are implemented throughout the brain, with lots of added customizations to get emotions(e.g. shortcuts from primary sensory areas to amygdala, etc.), and biological drives through the system.