[incision]

>"A child learns to speak and recognize objects from much less data than contemporary machine learning/data mining/AI/whatever you call it needs."

You think?

When a kid starts talking at 1.5, 2, 3 years or whenever they're doing so after being exposed to many thousands of hours of input, much of it effectively guided.

Also, as far as I know, we don't have nearly enough understanding of the way the brain works to make a useful comparison between "records" fed to a model and all the analog input that goes into making a person.