I don't think AGI is right around the corner

Not only do I not think it is right around the corner. I'm not even convinced it is even possible or at the very least I don't think it is possible using conventional computer hardware. I don't think being able to regurgitate information in an understandable form is even an adequate or useful measurement of intelligence. If we ever crack artificial intelligence it's highly possible that in its first form it is of very low intelligence by humans standards, but is truly capable of learning on its own without extra help.

I think the only way that it’s actually impossible is if we believe that there’s something magical and fundamentally immeasurable about humans that leads to our general intelligence. Otherwise we’re just machines, after all. A human brain is theoretically reproducible outside standard biological mechanisms, if you have a good enough nanolathe.

Maybe our first AGI is just a Petri dish brain with a half-decent python API. Maybe it’s more sand-based, though.

Our silicon machines exist in a countable state space (you can easily assign a unique natural number to any state for a given machine). However, 'standard biological mechanisms' exist in an uncountable state space - you need real numbers to properly describe them. Cantor showed that the uncountable is infinitely more infinite (pardon the word tangle) than the countable. I posit that the 'special sauce' for sentience/intelligence/sapience exists beyond the countable, and so is unreachable with our silicon machines as currently envisaged.

I call this the 'Cardinality Barrier'

That’s an interesting thought. It steps beyond my realm of confidence, but I’ll ask in ignorance: can a biological brain really have infinite state space if there’s a minimum divisible Planck length?

Infinite and “finite but very very big” seem like a meaningful distinction here.

I once wondered if digital intelligences might be possible but would require an entire planet’s precious metals and require whole stars to power. That is: the “finite but very very big” case.

But I think your idea is constrained to if we wanted a digital computer, is it not? Humans can make intelligent life by accident. Surely we could hypothetically construct our own biological computer (or borrow one…) and make it more ideal for digital interface?