Chess was a major topic of AI research for decades because playing a good game of chess was seen as a sign of intelligence. Until computers started playing better than people and we decided it didn't count for some reason. It reminds me of the (real) quote by I.I. Rabi that got used in Nolan's movie when Rabi was frustrated with how the committee was minimizing the accomplishments of Oppenheimer: "We have an A-bomb! What more do you want, mermaids?"
They chased chess since they thought if they could solve chess then AGI would be close. They were wrong, so then they moved the goalpost to something more complicated thinking that new thing would lead to AGI. Repeat forever.
> we decided it didn't count for some reason
Optimists did move their goals once you realized that solving chess actually didn't lead anywhere, and then they blamed the pessimists for moving even though pessimists mostly stayed still throughout these AI hype waves. It is funny that optimists constantly are wrong and have to move their goal like that, yes, but people tend to point the finger at the wrong people here.
The AI winter came from AI optimists constantly moving the goalposts like that, constantly saying "we are almost there, the goal is just that next thing and we are basically done!". AI pessimists doesn't do that, all that came from the optimists that tried to get more funding.
And we see that exact same thing play out today, a lot of AI optimists clamoring for massive amounts of money because they are close to AGI, just like what we have seen in the past. Maybe they are right this time, but this time just like back then it is those optimists that are setting and moving the goal posts.
It also turns out that you can make machines that fly without having them flap their wings like flying animals. But it would be absurd to claim that airplanes don't fly for that reason.
I think you'll find that definition "intelligence" is a bit harder than defining "flight", and convincing people that "a machine programmed to mechanically follow the steps in the minimax algorithm as applied to chess, and do nothing else" doesn't fit most people's definition of "intelligence" in the context of the philosophical question of what constitutes intelligence.
