are you asking what would I require to recognize some computing system as a "true AI", or, basically, what is intelligence?
Somewhat. I think my question is better phrased as, "Why do you have a distinction between true intelligence and not true intelligence?"
My use of intelligence is defined (roughly) as cross domain optimization. A more intelligent agent is just better at doing lots of things it wants to do successfully, and conversely, something that's better at doing a larger variety of tasks than a similarly motivated agent is considered more intelligent. It seems to me to be a (somewhat lumpy and modular) scale, ranging from a rock, up through natural selection, humans, and then a Superintelligent AI near the upper bound.
Why do you have a distinction between true intelligence and not true intelligence?
I have a distinction between what I'd be willing to call intelligence and what I'd say may look like intelligence but really isn't.
For example, IBM's Watson playing Jeopardy or any of the contemporary chess-playing programs do look like intelligence. But I'm not willing to call them intelligent.
My use of intelligence is defined (roughly) as cross domain optimization.
Ah. No, in this context I'm talking about intelligence as a threshold phenomenon, notably as something t...
A stub on a point that's come up recently.
If I owned a paperclip factory, and casually told my foreman to improve efficiency while I'm away, and he planned a takeover of the country, aiming to devote its entire economy to paperclip manufacturing (apart from the armament factories he needed to invade neighbouring countries and steal their iron mines)... then I'd conclude that my foreman was an idiot (or being wilfully idiotic). He obviously had no idea what I meant. And if he misunderstood me so egregiously, he's certainly not a threat: he's unlikely to reason his way out of a paper bag, let alone to any position of power.
If I owned a paperclip factory, and casually programmed my superintelligent AI to improve efficiency while I'm away, and it planned a takeover of the country... then I can't conclude that the AI is an idiot. It is following its programming. Unlike a human that behaved the same way, it probably knows exactly what I meant to program in. It just doesn't care: it follows its programming, not its knowledge about what its programming is "meant" to be (unless we've successfully programmed in "do what I mean", which is basically the whole of the challenge). We can't therefore conclude that it's incompetent, unable to understand human reasoning, or likely to fail.
We can't reason by analogy with humans. When AIs behave like idiot savants with respect to their motivations, we can't deduce that they're idiots.