Lex, You ask (often) exactly the right questions. I don't read about AI but I know you are very insightful and piercingly intuitive. Real AI will only be possible by the analysis of 'experience' rather than pre-interpreted 'data'. A true AGI will respond to 'itself' rather than to the input of its 'sensors'. There is a profound difference between a complete 'description' of a thing's interaction with its environment and its 'actual' interaction with its environment. AGI will not be about what is sensed 'beyond' itself but about what is sensed 'within' itself. We connect to the outside world via our senses but the data are 'not' comprehensible until they 'directly' and physically affect our dynamic biology / brain.  Thereafter it is analysis of that internal biology (seeming to be the outside world) that ignites consciousness without which AGI is impossible.