Right. I recently saw a podcast with Dileep George of Vicarious AI. I don't know if his specific techniques will work fully generally but at the high level he is talking about something quite similar to what you are saying in terms of grounding language understanding and having real models of the world. So I am definitely following him.
More broadly there is a growing group of researchers who are working on trying to achieve better world modeling (although of course there have been many for decades, it just seems that the number who are coming from deep learning towards AGI with more emphasis on world modeling is increasing).
Such as Ferran Alet. Sort of the Tenenbaum school I guess. Or Melanie Mitchell has been saying similar for quite awhile. They have recent talks on Good AI's YouTube channel.
More broadly there is a growing group of researchers who are working on trying to achieve better world modeling (although of course there have been many for decades, it just seems that the number who are coming from deep learning towards AGI with more emphasis on world modeling is increasing).
Such as Ferran Alet. Sort of the Tenenbaum school I guess. Or Melanie Mitchell has been saying similar for quite awhile. They have recent talks on Good AI's YouTube channel.