I think older AI work like POMDPs and statistical work like causal inference are more on line with what's needed to produce true AGI than the current breakthroughs in neural nets are. And I'd certainly prefer our chances to survive the results if AGI is reached through statistical rigor.

Though we know for a fact that it is possible to find intelligence by randomly throwing things at the wall until something works. It's not like evolution uses a principled statistical process.