You are not alone. I think NNs are definitely the best approach to AI, and recent progress is quite promising. They have had a lot of success on a number of different AI tasks. From machine vision to translation to video game playing. They are extremely general purpose.

Here's a recent quote from Schmidhuber (who I personally believe is most likely to create AGI.)

Schmidhuber and Hassabis found sequential decision making as a next important research topic. Schmidhuber’s example of Capuchin monkeys was both inspiring and fun (not only because he mistakenly pronounced it as a cappuccino monkey.) In order to pick a fruit at the top of a tree, Capuchin monkey plans a sequence of sub-goals (e.g., walk to the tree, climb the tree, grab the fruit, …) effortlessly. Schmidhuber believes that we will have machines with animal-level intelligence (like a Capuchin smartphone?) in 10 years.

Schmidhuber’s answer was the most unique one here. He believes that the code for truly working AI agents will be so simple and short that eventually high school students will play around with it. In other words, there won’t be any worry of industries monopolizing AI and its research. Nothing to worry at all!