After maybe 10-15 years of being an AGI enthusiast who never dared to pursue it "seriously", something has prompted me in the last few months to decide to make my next side project into a "real" AGI effort.
I think maybe its just the number of people who are talking publicly about working on it that is making me want to "work on it" "seriously"?
I mean, when I get my current side project "out the door" to some degree, I plan to spend at least a few months where the weekend (or sometimes nights) project that I actually admit to working on is "AGI research". Previously I have occasionally spent a few hours here or there mainly passively trying to learn about some deep learning or AGI thing by skimming papers or watching videos. But the plan now is to actually work on active learning projects/experiments for several hours every weekend. For at least two or three months (or longer if I don't give up before then).
Theoretically at least some of it could be of practical use, although I am thinking that I may avoid trying to become a deep learning expert because it seems like people have that covered and it might take me five years. Lol. So I am trying to think of GPU programming approaches that are new. Which most likely will turn out to be a waste of time but will certainly be interesting for me.