"Your metaphor fails to indicate the dependence of AI on data." I'm not sure how you conclude that; the post you're responding to says exactly "...conditioned

"Your metaphor fails to indicate the dependence of AI on data." I'm not sure how you conclude that; the post you're responding to says exactly "...conditioned on some historical data." No historical data, no conditioning, and therefore no AI, just random bits. And fwiw, you could say much the same about human beings. There must be an environment producing our oxygen, water, food. Indeed, it's not clear what a single human raised in isolation would be like, even assuming the oxygen, water, food. Not very intelligent seeming, I would guess; perhaps not even with much of a language. Fortunately, no one has performed the experiment, but we've come close: deaf people raised by non-deaf parents in a non-deaf community appear to have a sparse sort of sign language. Only when they're put together with other deaf people does a more typical, fluent sign language arise, with a full grammar. (This we know from the deaf people in Nicaragua.)