Non-embodied AGI is preferable

The whole point of AGI is its broad flexibility to have many formats both resembling and greatly extending human-level intelligence.

An unfortunate artifact of the human substrate is that so much processing is devoted to the sensory network input and output and other demands of having a body and so little is available for the higher levels of intellectual processing and knowledge extension.

The computer substrate is of tremendous benefit to AGI. Not only does the AGI not have the physical, sensory and processing constraints of a body, neither does it have the time frame constraints of biology; it can evolve at exponential rates that would never be possible in biological substrates. Further, the human sense of identity and consciousness is body-grounded, awareness and control only extends to the barriers of the human body. In a computer network, the domain and locus of control is potentially as broad as the network and can be fluid and changing and distinct by function. This broad and malleable perception and control domain may lead to the development of quite different consciousnesses than human consciousness.

Even the term 'embodiment' is anthropomorphic in that it means a form that can be seen by humans, particularly a human-type form as in a robot; AGIs can theoretically take on many or multiple embodiments but in their highest form do not need any.

Some argue that embodiment is necessary to produce and evolve AGIs and certainly this is one approach, at this early stage of AGI development, all approaches should be tried, including other non-embodiment models.