I skimmed it and didn't think it was that bad - it's kind of interesting to see a thesis that allows reasonably informed speculation. I don't know enough about ML to say whether the core results are actually of any value.

The title is a bit much but it does say "The title of this thesis is deliberately provocative".

University of Lugano, apparently.

I also quote, from the preface, "This research was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation under grants 2100-67712.0 and 200020-107616. Many funding agencies are not willing to support such blue-sky research. Their backing has been greatly appreciated."

Whatever the uni. He was working at IDSIA, one of the main contributors to deep learning. Also, his advisor, Markus Hutter, did some serious stuff on AGI.

Did you read the paper? I skimmed it, and wouldn't describe it as "blatantly speculative." There are certainly predictions based on facts (or at least, claims which are believed to be facts, but I repeat myself), but I don't think those are out of place in a thesis.