I think we will see AGI. But for the AI to be robust, it has to interact with the world, even if it is a simulated one. We need to build an AI that knows what a toddler knows before we can build one that understands wikipedia.

Human text does interact with the real world, so I don't see the limitation. Adding more modalities (vision, sound, etc.) probably will increase performance, and I think this is where we are heading, but it's silly to say that any one of these modalities are not grounded in reality. It's like saying humans can't understand reality because we can't see infrared rays. I mean, yeah?, but it's not the only way of making sense of reality.

Language is a representation medium for the world, it isn't the world itself. When we talk, we only say what can't be inferred because we assume the listener has a basic understanding of the dynamics of the world (e.g., if I push a table the things on it will also move). Having an AI watch youtube and enabling it to act out what it sees in simulation would give it that grounding. We are heading that direction. So, I agree ChatGPT is awesome. I don't believe it understands what it is saying, but it can if it trains by acting out what it sees on Youtube.