We basically just need a system that comes up with efficient representations of the world such that it can reason about it, i.e. that it can tell you which hypotheses about the world are likely true given some data. This computation allows you to make predictions and predictions are really at the heart of intelligence. If you can follow a hypothetical trajectory of generated, hallucinated or simulated samples of reality, i.e. samples that likely correspond to what actually happens in the world (and in the agent's own brain), then you can actually perform actions that are targeted at some purpose (e.g. maximizing reward signals). However, there are many sources of data that essentially give you the same information. Whether you create a representation by directly interacting with the world or just watch many examples of how the world generally evolves over time and how different entities interact with one another, you essentially get the same idea about how the world works (except in the first case you also learn a motor system). I think the anthropomorphism is really misplaced here, because computer systems are not dependent on actually performing in the real world. Since computers have near unlimited, noiseless memory and have super fast access to that memory, they can actually plan interactions by careful reasoning on the fly instead of needing to learn e.g. motor skills for manipulating objects, eating and handwriting before one can get anywhere near the performance of computers wrt. access to reliable external memory. A computer system also does not have hormone and neuromodulator levels that need to be met for healthy development (e.g. dopamine), therefore the intuition that deprivation of interaction with the world prevents learning is extremely misleading.