I was 14-16 when I playing chess programs on my Apple II and even then I didn't consider playing these games well "a sign of intelligence". I understood even th

I was 14-16 when I playing chess programs on my Apple II and even then I didn't consider playing these games well "a sign of intelligence". I understood even then it's a finite searching space and that brute force (with rules to throw away some defective variants) can and will solve those games one day. It was just a matter of better hardware. So maybe those people who considered playing these games a sign of intelligence were not very bright. And using their obviously flawed take on this is not and should not be a benchmark about our progress towards general AI. I am not patting myself on the back here. I would never call myself a genius. I am a fairly average programmer. But, if I knew what I knew at 16 then I am pretty sure there are many much more gifted individuals that knew that and more. So maybe those people proclaiming beating chess is a sign of intelligence were just at the right place at the right time; maybe even nepotism or relationships with investors and politicians were involved? And maybe they didn't have that much expertise in the first place? You know what I'd consider a very good progress towards a general AI? A system that can play StarCraft so well that it can beat all world champions -- and I don't mean with perfect micro-management of units (which I think is already achieved) but with creative strategies e.g. you're losing the center-map fight but you do a drop of troops in the main resource-mining operation of the enemy, severely crippling their economy for several minutes, giving you time to recover troops (something I've seen several times in playoffs). And you are right here, general AI is most likely first going to be used in the military and maybe in financial markets as well.