It depends on what the nature of language is. If it is purely a tool of consciousness, a separate module in mind like basic image recognition seems to be, then the picture you're painting may be possible. It may be that the language signal is strong enough to pick up just by looking at orders of magnitude more examples than we can right now. That we can crack the encryption, so to speak.
However, if language is more integral than that. If language is more a facet of intelligence than a building block. If language is the structure of sentience, rather than something sentience leverages, then no, all the chat bots in the world won't help. We need something that can integrate more than just plain text embeddings of incredibly intricate and complex structures. We can't crack this code without a key.
My guess is that this latter scenario is the likely case.
However, if language is more integral than that. If language is more a facet of intelligence than a building block. If language is the structure of sentience, rather than something sentience leverages, then no, all the chat bots in the world won't help. We need something that can integrate more than just plain text embeddings of incredibly intricate and complex structures. We can't crack this code without a key.
My guess is that this latter scenario is the likely case.