As soon as machines become capable of human-level performance at any task, they inevitably become far better at it than humans in a very short time. (Can anyone name a single exception to this law in any area of technology?)
This may depend on how you define a "very short time" and how you define "human-level performance." The second is very important: Do you mean about the middle of the pack or akin to the very best humans in the skill? If you mean better than the vast majority of humans, then there's a potential counterexample. In the late 1970s, chess programs were playing at a master level. In the early 1980s dedicated chess computers were playing better than some grandmasters. But it wasn't until the 1990s that chess programs were good enough to routinely beat the highest ranked grandmasters. Even then, that was mainly for games that had very short times. It was not until 1998 that the world champion Kasparov actually lost a set of not short timed games to a computer. The best chess programs are still not always beating grandmasters although most recently people have demonstrated low grandmaster level programs that can run on Mobile phones. So is a 30 year take-off slow enough to be a counterexample?
By the way, here's a good account of the history of computer chess by a commenter on a chess website (written in 2007, in the aftermath of Kramnik's defeat against a program running on an ordinary low-end server box):
...A brief timeline of anti-computer strategy for world class players:
20 years ago - Play some crazy gambits and demolish the computer every game. Shock all the nerdy computer scientists in the room.
15 years ago - Take it safely into the endgame where its calculating can't match human knowledge and intuition. Laugh at its pointless moves. Win m
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