I agree with this perspective. But I also see the current crop of AI as a "brute force" method towards AGI, which could still be combined with a symbolic system

I agree with this perspective. But I also see the current crop of AI as a "brute force" method towards AGI, which could still be combined with a symbolic system to make it significantly more efficient at basic reasoning. I sadly don't know why certain neural-symbolic aproaches haven't been explored further despite their incredibly promising results in the past.