I study ML, and I completely agree with the quoted statement. Deep networks have gotten pretty good at recognizing correlations in data. That's not on the same map as AGI. I don't know what "pre-AGI" means exactly, but I would include things like counterfactual reasoning or ability to develop and test models of the world, which are far from our AI capabilities so far. (edit: yes I am including RL, considering the relative performances of model-based vs model-free, I think this is a fair statement. Don't mean to be pessimistic, just realistic and trying to set expectations to avoid more winters.)