When the AI wakes up the first thing it will do is...

[Anomalocaris]

Why can’t Data be meaningful to it through some pre-defined software algorithms and objective?

Searle's Chinese room problem.

Imagine I developed a software algorithm for passing the Turing test in Chinese. I then stuck you in a box and gave you the algorithm so you are in effect the computer. Then native Chinese speakers come along and pass in Chinese text to you. You look up the rules of the algorithm and pass out the correct response. The users then go away satisfied that you genuinely understand Chinese. Except you don't because you don't use the Chinese language for yourself in the outside world.

In a data realm, all any software algorithm could do would be to look for statistical relationships and patterns in the data. But it would not know or understand what the data pertains to in the outside world because it is not itself embodied in the outside world, or in any world in which meaningful comparisons can be made.

The problem with this analogy seems to me to be that an AI can not embody itself in the outside world except through  the interpretation layer of senses analogous to your Chinese person passing in Chinese texts.  All that it might “know” about how the data pertains to in the outside world must also be fed in by the metaphorical Chinese person, who could be making it up out of whole cloth. In the latter case the person is effectively running a simulation in the digital world for the benefit of the AI.

Whether it is working in a purely digital world or one that has reality outside the digital world does not need to be known or knowable to the AI.   Only the interpretation layer needs to be configured appropriately to process inputs in one or the other, or both, and convert them into the vocabulary of AI engine.