An interesting question along that line, is that of Emergent Intelligence.

I think intelligence is an emergent property of the universe (like many other things e.g., complex chemistry, life, multicellularity, etc.).

Some AI researchers believe we simply have to create a big enough neural network, and an intelligence will "emerge," similar to how intelligence "emerged" via evolution.

Yes, all dominant theories I'm aware of discuss super-intelligence as an emergent property. However, my supervisor, Francis Heylighen believes that A.I. theorists are very mistaken to believe that artificial general intelligence will emerge from robotics (He wrote about this in a paper called "A brain in a vat cannot break out). He believes the only way superintelligence can arise is through the collective network we are creating on the Internet I'm not sure where I stand in regards to his criticism of A.I. I think we should take the possibility of artificial general intelligence seriously... however I think in any scenario the A.I. would be dependent on our system and our internet and that it would almost certainly be "friendly" because of that. It would be in its best interest to be altruistic with a system as massive as ours. And in any scenario the Internet itself will be deeply rooted into humanity's biology (as long as an artificial general intelligence arises post-2035ish). So the emergence of artificial general intelligence would probably just cause us to accelerate the process of our own transformation into robots (via brain-interface technology).

But I think that because I think there is an inherent unity in singularity and global brain theories as I said to thenewgreen.

Others believe emergence is fantasy, and we'll have to actually write a large portion of the intelligence.

Hm. I'm personally skeptical of anyone who thinks that it wouldn't be emergent. Intelligence requires evolution in an environment. I think if we get AGI it will be from evolutionary robotics.

Minksy has some fantastic papers on intelligence, from the perspective of an AI researcher.

What ones? I'd love to read them.