I agree that AI is possible from text alone but only with the added stipulation that full understanding of text requires a very sophisticated learner. In order

I agree that AI is possible from text alone but only with the added stipulation that full understanding of text requires a very sophisticated learner. In order to predict what a human will say next, you need the ability to maintain extended context, use world models plus deduction to narrow and maintain multiple possibilities; all while being able to infer the state of the thing you are trying to predict (which means the AI itself has complex internal state far beyond anything an RNN or Neural Turing machine could manage today). If I said "That is one huge fan", could you predict what my next word will be? It would depend a lot on context and the ability to reason within a complex world model. Depending on whether I had gone to a concert or to a wind tunnel, your distribution over guesses would alter. If I had gone whale watching you might even suspect I made a typo. Changing huge to large would lead to major to no adjustments, depending on each guess. So while I agree an AI could emerge from text alone, it would have to be very sophisticated to do this.