The idea that embodiment is necessary for intelligence is just another example of anthropocentrism.
It's likely that we will soon have AGI that can solve the protein folding problem, play go at a superhuman level, and create arbitrary images from a text prompt, yet still underperform humans when it comes to proprioception and object manipulation.
Humans have evolved specifically for proprioception for billions of years, it's a core survival skill that all animals have in common. In contrast our history of language and abstract thinking only go back less than a million years.
Human brains are overfit to our environment, which is why we're so good at recognizing human faces and so bad at mathematics. A intelligence created from a blank slate need not share our limitations - it could perceive in more than 3 dimensions, it could grasp quantum amplitudes as easily as we understand integers, it could have multiple embodiments and experiences simultaneously.
I'm inclined to agree that it likely is necessary for general intelligence. It's like the Mary's Room thought experiment. You don't understand what the color red is if you've never seen it, no matter how well you understand the abstract concept of red.
An AI can never truly understand the physical world without direct experience of it. Now, I believe you probably could build something that could be called an AGI without embodiment, but it would be greatly limited by its lack of experience of the physical.
What's "anthro" about bodies? Spiders have bodies. Heck, cars have bodies.
Anyway, I think you're missing the point a little. Sure, we could build a super intelligent agent that lives entirely in the stock market or some disembodied place. And if the stock market were a closed system, that intelligence could (theoretically at least) reign supreme in that realm.
But when people say artificial "general" intelligence, what the "general" means is "for typical Earthly challenges". And there is no way a critter could be good at typical Earthly challenges without... you know... existing on Earth, growing up on Earth, and learning by interacting with Earth. A.k.a having a body.
It's likely that we will soon have AGI that can solve the protein folding problem, play go at a superhuman level, and create arbitrary images from a text prompt, yet still underperform humans when it comes to proprioception and object manipulation.
Humans have evolved specifically for proprioception for billions of years, it's a core survival skill that all animals have in common. In contrast our history of language and abstract thinking only go back less than a million years.
Human brains are overfit to our environment, which is why we're so good at recognizing human faces and so bad at mathematics. A intelligence created from a blank slate need not share our limitations - it could perceive in more than 3 dimensions, it could grasp quantum amplitudes as easily as we understand integers, it could have multiple embodiments and experiences simultaneously.