>You cannot get real, actual AGI (the same ability to perform tasks as a human) without a continuous cycle of learning and deep memory, which LLMs cannot do

I disagree that this prerequisite is more necessary than e.g. having legs to move over the ground. But besides that, current LLMs are literally a result of the continuous cycle of learning and deep memory. It's pretty crude compared to what evolution and human process had to do, but that's precisely how the iterative model development cycle with the hierarchical bootstrap looks like. It's not fully autonomous though (engineer-driven/humans in the loop). Moreover, the distillation process you describe is precisely what "learning" is.