AI is shorthand for a neural network algorithm that learns to accomplish a task through training instead of being told (very explicitly) how to do it by a human. There's no point in arguing about how people use language. It's completely arbitrary. You better get used to people calling neural network programs AI because it's not going away.

What this AI did was simply to learn the rules... the game has the solution drawn on it... The point of the game is to follow, not to find, the path.

You have a very deep misunderstanding of the complexity of this feat and so I'm not surprised you don't think its impressive. Just follow the path... So easy! -_-

At the start of this task, the AI knew almost nothing. All it knew is it had "hands", and it had a directive to get the ball to the end.

It didn't know any of the following:

• what a ball is and that it rolls
• the fact that lines on the board indicate a safe path
• what gravity is and why the ball moves when the knobs are turned
• that turning the knob farther makes the ball go faster, to a point
• that the dark spots on the board (holes) make the ball drop and make you have to start over
• that the thick lines are walls
• that walls block the ball!

You see what I'm getting at here? It understood nothing! Sure, you can explain the rules to a human and they'd be able to start learning how to play, but the real learning is learning the hand eye coordination to get the ball to do anything you want.

Even the concept of "explain the rules" is not simple. Sure it's simple for a brain that evolved over millions of years and uses natural language. But explaining rules to a computer means programming it. You have to hard code all of the rules of the game, and in this case, all of the physics of the game. You have to write the code that explains all of that to a traditional computer before it can even start attempting to play this game.

This AI needed none of that. It learned everything on the fly!

A human could... probably solve the game in way less than 6 hours

Ha! It's clear you've never played this game. Even if you could get your first win in 6 hours, you wouldn't then be able to repeat the win every time thereafter.

This AI solving the game in 6 hours is literally the equivalent of one year old baby learning to play and finishing the maze in 6 hours! That is jaw-droppingly amazing, like the author says!

How are you not impressed?

(All analogies are bad. The baby would never have the attention span or motivation to actually play the game. That's the one inherent advantage the program has. It does what it's told. Plus the AI has perfect motor control right out of the box. It doesn't know that it's spinning motors, but it's control of them is perfect, and a baby is still learning how to make their muscles do anything at all.)