All we need to do to turn any LLM in to an AGI is figure out what system of tags is Turing-complete. If enough of us monkeys experiment with <load>s and <store>s and <j[e,ne,gt...]>s, we'll have AGI by morning.
The only real difference between artificial intelligence and artificial consciousness is self-awareness through self-supervision. Basically the more transparent that AI becomes, and the more able it is to analyze its thoughts and iterate until arriving at a solution, the more it will become like us.
Although we're still left with the problem that the only observer we can prove exists is ourself, if we can even do that. Which is only a trap within a single time/reality ethos.
We could have AGI right now today by building a swarm of LLMs learning from each other's outputs and evolving together. Roughly the scale of a small mammalian brain running a minimalist LLM per cell. Right now I feel that too much GPU power is spent on training. Had we gone with a different architecture (like the one I've wanted since the 90s and went to college for but never manifested) with highly multicore (1000 to 1 million+) CPUs with local memories running the dozen major AI models including genetic algorithms, I believe that AGI would have already come about organically. Because if we had thousands of hobbyists running that architecture in their parents' basements, something like SETI@home, the overwhelming computer power would have made space for Ray Kurzweil's predictions.
Instead we got billionaires and the coming corporate AI tech dystopia:
https://www.pcmag.com/news/musks-xai-supercomputer-goes-onli...
Promoting self-actualization and UBI to overcome wealth inequality and deliver the age of spiritual machines and the New Age are all aspects of the same challenge, and I believe that it will be solved by 2030, certainly no later than 2040. What derails it won't be a technological hurdle, but the political coopting of the human spirit through othering, artificial scarcity, perpetual war, etc.