To use your analogy, because starting with "WATER FLOWS DOWNHILL" and trying to work out how much energy a dam in the river could generate leads to flooded vill

To use your analogy, because starting with "WATER FLOWS DOWNHILL" and trying to work out how much energy a dam in the river could generate leads to flooded villages. 1) Modelling the higher level phenomena is really, really hard to do at anything other than a basic level. We could just build formal logic systems, but we don't want to have to put all the information in there ourselves, so they've got to learn it somehow. 2) You've got to get the concepts into the AI to start with, we're still trying to work out how to tell the difference between objects in images. 3) It is being done, it just doesn't sound as sexy and so you don't hear as much in mainstream news. 4) It may have fewer short term benefits. 5) Biology has a working example we can try and steal.