Couldn't agree more. I always return to the following quote [1] from Marvin Minsky, who's an intellectual hero of mine:

> Most people think that accomplishments like [those of geniuses] require "talents" or "gifts" that cannot be explained… [but] I suspect that genius needs… unusually effective ways to learn. It’s not enough to learn a lot; one also has to manage what one learns. Those masters have, beneath the surface of their mastery, some special knacks of “higher-order” expertise, which help them organize and apply the things they learn. It is those hidden tricks of mental management that produce the systems that create those works of genius.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Society-Mind-Marvin-Minsky/dp/0671657...

"Novel" is relative.

However, this concept dates back at least to the 1980s with Marvin Minsky's "The Society of the Mind":

https://www.amazon.com/Society-Mind-Marvin-Minsky/dp/0671657...

Also 3 more "easy overview" type books:

The New Turing Omnibus by A K Dewdney (https://www.amazon.com/New-Turing-Omnibus-Sixty-Six-Excursio...)

The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky (https://www.amazon.com/Society-Mind-Marvin-Minsky/dp/0671657...)

Creating Mind: How the Brain Works by John E Dowling (https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Mind-How-Brain-Works/dp/0393...)

I'm curious how close the research community is to general AI

Nobody knows, because we don't know how to do it yet. There could be a "big breakthrough" tomorrow that more or less finishes it out, or it could take 100 years, or - worst case - Penrose turns out to be right and it's not possible at all.

Also, are there useful books, courses or papers that go into general AI research?

Of course there are. See:

https://agi.mit.edu

https://agi.reddit.com

http://www.agi-society.org/

https://opencog.org/

https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-General-Intelligence-Part...

https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-General-Intelligence-Part...

https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-General-Intelligence-Cogni...

https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Artificial-Intelligence-Alg...

https://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-Revealed/dp/0...

https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Understanding-Creation-I...

https://www.amazon.com/Society-Mind-Marvin-Minsky/dp/0671657...

https://www.amazon.com/Unified-Theories-Cognition-William-Le...

https://www.amazon.com/Master-Algorithm-Ultimate-Learning-Ma...

https://www.amazon.com/Singularity-Near-Humans-Transcend-Bio...

https://www.amazon.com/Emotion-Machine-Commonsense-Artificia...

https://www.amazon.com/Physical-Universe-Oxford-Cognitive-Ar...

See also, the work on various "Cognitive Architectures", including SOAR, ACT-R, CLARION, etc,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_architecture

"Neuvoevolution"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroevolution

and "Biologically Inspired Computing"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biologically_inspired_computin...

Take a look at Marvin Minsky's The Society of Mind. Consciousness as an emergent property of the communication between simple agents is a large arm of cognitive science.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Society-Mind-Marvin-Minsky/dp/0671...