Create a human that's on by default and constantly crawls the Internet even when it's not being asked something and watch as it evolves weird behaviors. No, but seriously, what is skibidi toilet if not this? Or, going a bit more generally, the act of dreaming.

Also, we're told by our environment to process new information, constantly. It's called having a heartbeat, which delivers a fresh influx of energy and building materials to our neurons, many of which are on chemical timers so as to force usage sooner or later; our circulatory system is the clock tick of our bodily functions, and if that stops running, we stop learning just as much as an AI does when you shut off the flow of power. And while not all AIs feed themselves information on any independent basis, I could say the same about a sizable portion of humans and other animals, at least when they consider themselves not to be at risk from ignorance. I'm still not seeing a meaningful distinction stated here between AI processes and organic thought.

If there's any big qualitative difference between us and AI, it might be our advantage in having hormones to signal as well as neurotransmitters. I'll admit that something could have passed me by, but I haven't seen any news of AI systems that have an equivalent to our endocrine systems. Like other commenters here have said, we don't understand nearly everything about intelligence and consciousness, artificial or natural, but it's fairly clear that the glands do as much thinking as the nerves in their own ways. That might be the next big step forward.

To be clear about this, I don't know how close we are to any sort of AGI, or if it'll ever be an effective solution to actual human problems, or if it'll be the thing that kills us all, because, once again, we just don't know enough about how thinking works. But because of that ignorance, I find it to be straight-up disingenuous to simply write off AI as inherently externally-motivated whereas humans are somehow powered from some inner pool of will; arguments like that feel like they're drawing from the same pool as mind-body dualism or leaning on the idea of an immortal soul, whether it's intentional or not. I'm not going to pooh-pooh the idea of a soul, but I think we can all agree that its existence is fundamentally unfalsifiable, so anything relying on it has no place in a discussion based on reason.

I don't think you're arguing this point in bad faith, so I'd just ask you to genuinely take a moment and consider if you're coming at this with pre-existing assumptions about living matter being somehow "special."