I'm drawing a blank on the paper and can't find it casually Googling, but there are fairly well understood mathematical models for how neurotransmitters cause neurons to fire or not fire. It is just probabilities when you zoom out enough. One paper modeled part of a rat brain, visual cortex I think, using this by basically coding up some simulated neurons and neurotransmitters, then turned it on. They were able to get the program and the live rat brain to display similar patterns when showing them various images.
I feel like this could be a path to GI without "truly" understanding the human brain: make a large enough simulation of the brain and turn it on. I actually do think we understand enough about the nuts and bolts of neuron interaction to achieve this. What we don't understand is where neurons firing turns into consciousness. It seems like it is probably just an emergent property of a complex enough neuron graph.
I feel like this could be a path to GI without "truly" understanding the human brain: make a large enough simulation of the brain and turn it on. I actually do think we understand enough about the nuts and bolts of neuron interaction to achieve this. What we don't understand is where neurons firing turns into consciousness. It seems like it is probably just an emergent property of a complex enough neuron graph.