Non chess specific game AI that learns any game and can play chess? There is another question that asks "Has anyone ever written a chess program that does have insights of its own" that question is about a chess only game AI. I am asking having to learn the rules of the game, pieces, board size, etc. The program should be able to learn any board game, checkers, go, etc. Computers programmed by humans are better at chess than humans. Any computer programmed by itself (via some self learning algorithm, where even the rules have to be learned, i.e. number of pieces, board dimensions, piece move rules, game objective, etc) playing any good at all? Let's ignore that the self learning algorithm would have been devised by a human...

If you know of any such generic game AI engines, please post references to them, at least their name. Thanks!
http://rebelscience.blogspot.de/2011/02/intelligent-computer-chess-part-i.html

This is the blog of a guy who tries to do what you describe: Create an artificial intelligence that learns to play chess purely by trial and error. I don't think he ever got very far. He also believes that the old testament contains coded information on how to create an AI …

It is surely possible to create an AI that learns to play chess from scratch, but I doubt it would ever be any good (Though this General Game Playing stuff doesn't learn the rules, the deepmind company atari AI does.). The reason is that chess is a tactical game and calculating tactics requires extremely optimised code. That's nothing you just stumble into after playing a few million games.