Brains just process information. Computers process information and we continue to make them better at it. Eventually, computers will process information at least as well as brains do for various definitions of "well".
https://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_can_we_build_ai_without...
There is absolutely no guarantee that consciousness and general intelligence is an emergent property of any sufficiently capable information processing system. It feels intuitive that it would be, but so far we only have biological examples and no artificial ones.
Even the most sophisticated artificial neural networks we can build today are nothing more than curve fitting with lots of parameters. Perhaps that's all it takes, and with enough parameters, curve fitting can give rise to general AI, but I'm seeing very bold predictions on HN every time this comes up and none of them are actually backed by anything tangible.
Can you provide any study that lays out a path with well researched and supported claims and assumptions from where we are now, to artificial general intelligence?
A runaway positive-feedback loop of continuously (self-)improving machines is a _possibility_ but by no means an inevitability. We don't even know what consciousness really is, what gives rise to it. To make a claim that it is inevitable that we'll be able to create general intelligence seems like an absurdly bold claim to make.
Again, I'm not saying it is impossible, but it seems hubris to me to declare that it is certain, when we only have vague and nebulous predictions to work on.
Your issues/questions indicate that you either aren't familiar with the talk or you disagree with the basic assumptions that he outlines. Questions like "Can you provide any study that lays out a path with well researched" are nonsensical given that we obviously aren't there yet.
If you disagree with his stated assumptions (which I'm not just going to repeat here since the video is short), then we can just agree to disagree because I find them compelling.
There's nothing you can predict that isn't built upon some assumptions. "When I flip this light switch, the lights will go on like they have the last 10,000 times I did so." Is a prediction built upon assumptions that power is still running, that the light bulb hasn't burnt out, and that physics will continue working the way it has up to this point.
You need to consider the strength of the assumptions in order to evaluate the predictions. If you consider those assumptions to not be fairly solid... whatever. But just handwaving that because "we are talking about opinions and assumptions" somehow gives your disbelief credibility worth exploring is a non-starter.