There is still at least one type of games where the AI could be smarter: Turn Based Strategy games - like Heroes of Might and Magic for example.
Here you do not need accuracy or to control multiple units at the same time or to compute a million moves ahead!
In these games on hard difficulty the computer gets the same initial resources as the player and plays to the best of its ability.
On impossible difficuly the player starts with a penalty in resources and again the computer plays at its best.
And still it's not impossible to defeat the AI.
To balance the sometimes less stellar AI the computer will sometimes cheat (i.e. get more money/resources, see more than they should, etc).
These types of AIs are as smart as the programmers that designed them: no matter how many CPU cycles they get, they still need to understand the game mechanics and apply them as a human would do!
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There is still at least one type of games where the AI could be smarter: Turn Based Strategy games - like Heroes of Might and Magic for example.
Here you do not need accuracy or to control multiple units at the same time or to compute a million moves ahead!
In these games on hard difficulty the computer gets the same initial resources as the player and plays to the best of its ability.
On impossible difficuly the player starts with a penalty in resources and again the computer plays at its best.
And still it's not impossible to defeat the AI.
To balance the sometimes less stellar AI the computer will sometimes cheat (i.e. get more money/resources, see more than they should, etc).
These types of AIs are as smart as the programmers that designed them: no matter how many CPU cycles they get, they still need to understand the game mechanics and apply them as a human would do!