Your analogy to mechanical systems are exactly where the breakdown to comparison with the human brain occurs, our brains are not like that, we don’t only have the blocks of text loaded into us, sure we only learn what we get exposed to but that doesn’t mean we can’t think of things we haven’t learned about.
The article I linked talks about the separation between the formation of thoughts and those thoughts being translated into words for linguistics.
The fact that you “don’t even know why the how the brain creates an articulated spoken word is even relevant here” speaks volumes to how much you understand the human brain, particularly in the context of artificial intelligence actually understanding the words it generates and the implications of thoughts behind the words and not just guessing which word comes next based on other words, the meanings of which are irrelevant.
I can listen to a song long enough to learn the words, that doesn’t mean I know what the song is about.
There’s an old joke I remember about economists and the GDP.
Two economists are walking through the jungle and come across a gigantic pile of lion scat. One turns to the other and said I’ll pay you 100$ to eat a bite of that shit.
Being an economists and 100$ being worth a lot, the guy eats the shit and gets paid.
A little while later they come across a pile of rhino dung. The now richer economist turns to the first and offers 100$ for him to take a bite out of this pile. 100$ is again a lot of money so he does it and eats the shit.
As they’re walking along, both picking their teeth, one turns to the other and asks “did we both just eat shit for nothing?” And the other days “of course not, now the GDP of the jungle has increased by 200$!”