The only general intelligence we know of is us. It stands to reason that the first step towards creating AGI is to copy the one machine we know is capable of that type of processing. Why doesn't our research focus on understanding and copying biological brains? Numenta did, with good results, but it isn't an industry trend.
The steps to learning to make aircraft didn't come from understanding how birds flap their wings. I can't imagine the kind of intelligence we consider general will be from study of how humans biologically think.
> Why doesn't our research focus on understanding and copying biological brains?
There's lots of basic research being done to better understand the biological brain. Progress is slow and steady, but the brain remains poorly understood at this point in time. Most applied research has pursued more pragmatic methods because these methods have had faster progress and proven more useful in practice.
