[avmich]

The proposal in the article is to define "understanding" and work towards testable satisfaction of the definition.

This sounds a bit like a studying for a test taking. What if we made a definition and then worked successfully to reach the state when, according to this definition, the system "understands". Can we expect to be satisfied with the result in general, outside of the definition?

The definition of understanding could be tricky, as history suggests. Other than "to understand is to translate into a form which is suitable for some use", there could be many definitions. Article itself brings examples of chess playing or truck driving which were considered good indicators, yet failed to satisfy us in some ways.

Maybe we should just keep redefining "understanding" as good as we can today, and changing it if needed, and work trying to create a system "good", not necessarily "passing the test"?