Check out "On Intelligence". It talks about their reasons for following biological constraints, in opposition to your point of view, common among computer scientists.
1) Modelling the higher level phenomena is really, really hard to do at anything other than a basic level. We could just build formal logic systems, but we don't want to have to put all the information in there ourselves, so they've got to learn it somehow.
2) You've got to get the concepts into the AI to start with, we're still trying to work out how to tell the difference between objects in images.
3) It is being done, it just doesn't sound as sexy and so you don't hear as much in mainstream news.
4) It may have fewer short term benefits.
5) Biology has a working example we can try and steal.