I don't think that we disagree here very much but we are talking past each other a little bit.

I definitely agree with your first point; I simply wouldn't call such an AI fully general. It could easily destroy the world though.

I also agree with your second point, but I think in terms of a practical plan for people working on AI natural language processing would be a place to start, and having that technology means such a project is likely closer as well as demonstrating that the technical capabilities aren't extremely far off. I don't think any state of natural language processing would count as strong evidence but I do think it counts as weak evidence and something of a small milestone.