Newshot 
I agree with this way of viewing but I am not longer sure you can't model it from the outside. It's like two methods of converging on a 3d manifold, you can build it from the inside, pushing the interior, like biology has, or you can build it from the outside, more like a human builds a sculpture. I don't see any absolute reason they both cannot work.
I do think we are probably building a sort of zombie intelligence this way though, rather than having something wake up in the interior and enforce an ordered and aware mind from within, like humans have. Interesting times.
Maybe the end will even be a mixture of both, like we can give it a head start with exterior modeling, sort of analogous to evolution shaping the way our brain starts, then have an interior force "wake up" inside and get it over the finish line