I really think Gary agrees with you, and you're just picking an unnecessary fight. Having advocated for this kind of approach decades ago, he fully appreciates the novelty of the approach. He points out the simplicity of Jeopardy and Chess as reasons why they haven't translated to the real world well, and maintains optimism about DeepMind. I don't read "the real question is whether the technology developed there can be taken out of the game world and into the real world" as a criticism, but praise; the question is worth considering, whereas so often it is not.
I don't intend to pick a fight. I am pointing out one deficiency I perceive in this widely shared article.
On the philosophical questions: I think even with the greatest technological advances, the question remains: will we adopt AI? I have seen too many situations where machine learning is not adopted even though algorithms can enable great functionality: usually the reason is lack of financial incentives or simple entrenched human interests (low-grade Ludditism). This resistance will lead to more (to use terminology from the AI debate) paperclip maximizers and fewer general AIs. This is already happening, the future of 2001 didn't happen to be HAL 9000, but an ingenious model and linear algebra algorithm to deliver better search results.
