> IMHO, that would qualify as an AGI even though it isn't writing essays or producing business plans.
I'm not sure it would, though. The "G" in AGI stands for "General", which a dog obviously can't showcase. The comparison must be done against humans, since the goal is to ultimately have the system perform human tasks.
The definition mentioned by tedsanders seems adequate to me. Most of the terms are fuzzy ("most", "outperform"), but limiting the criteria to economic value narrows it down to a measurable metric. Of course, this could be exploited by building a system that optimizes for financial gain over everything else, but this wouldn't be acceptable.
The actual definition is not that important, IMO. AGI, if it happens, won't appear suddenly from a singular event, but as a gradual process until it becomes widely accepted that we have reached it. The impact on society and our lives would be impossible to ignore at that point. The problem with this is that along the way there will be charlatans and grifters shouting from the rooftops that they've already cracked it, but this is nothing new.