To clarify: it's as smart as them in the sense that when you take in to account factors A-D (and similar factors), its intellectual output on any problem (including AGI research) would be similar.
It sounds like with factor C, you are saying that you expect AI insights to come faster once an working, if slow, AGI implementation is available. I don't think this is obvious. "Once you have an AI running on a computer it can implement good ideas or test ideas for goodness far faster and more empirically." We already have computers available for testing out AI insights.
Not really? You can test out pattern-matching or whatnot algorithms but you can't test out anything more generalized or as part of anything more generalized like problem-solving algorithms because those would require you to have an entity within which to run them.
This is a thread where people can ask questions that they would ordinarily feel embarrassed for not knowing the answer to. The previous "stupid" questions thread is at almost 500 questions in about a month, so I think it's time for a new one.
Also, I have a new "stupid" question.