This (1) thread from François Chollet describes 'Artificial Intelligence' very well in my opinion. From this point of view, it's obvious why you need to fallback to other data/metadata.
Further, to the linked tweets and the OP, I don't think that there's a direct line from where we are to where we want to be. As an analogy, no advancement in chemical rockets is going to get us to Alpha Centauri.