Artificial Intelligence: Weak AI vs. Strong AI

Today, such types of programs as games with a virtual opponent, web crawlers, programs which are used for controlling cars find enormous popularity. There is a technology, which unites all described above programs in realization. It is called artificial intelligence. Without it, we can’t imagine the modern world. To understand such a huge theme, it will be relevant to study out two concepts of Artificial Intelligence development: weak AI and strong AI.

What’s the difference between weak and strong AI?

Firstly, part of the past. The notion “strong AI” and “weak AI” was entered in 1980 by John Searle. In fact, he introduced “strong AI” definition, while “weak AI” appeared itself. A lot of people become confused when they meet these definitions: “What? Weak AI?? How can it works if it is weak?” Actually, every site, application or program containing invalid Artificial Intelligence can’t be usable. But in AI development this concept plays an important role. So let’s make an easy-understood statement to deal with in such a difficult theme. Strong AI (or true AI) is a theory in which computers can get skills of thinking and consciousness on their own. Also, strong AI has a list of demands to work correctly. This list includes:

• Education;
• Planning;
• Natural Language Processing (NLP);
• Making decisions;
• The general concept of reality.

One more important demand lies in the root of uniting all these characteristics. Shortly, strong AI must offer all qualities that human brain has, except those that won’t be accepted by scientists in virtue of weak exploring of this sphere, for example, empathy, wisdom, mindfulness. However, humanity only attempts first steps in AI development, and real results will be seen in many many years, but futurists believe that strong AI will be born in about few years.

One of the most important steps that were made by AI developers is neuromorphic chips. Computers which are based on these chips will simultaneously process a trillion calculations. This approach can help modeling the whole human brain.

Nowadays, the most successful project in strong AI development is “Human brain project”. As you can understand from the name of the project, this campaign’s goals are focused mainly on brain work simulation. As the project is only at the stage of development, we can only read and watch the news and wish luck to the people involved in it.

Examples of the weak artificial intelligence we can see almost everywhere. Web crawlers and recognition systems are the most popular examples of weak AI. So, what does it mean? Weak AI doesn’t have those features that strong AI has. In weak artificial system development, scientists or developers don’t care about building the system, which functionality will remind how human brains operate. In fact, people that are interested in AI technology and code in Lisp or Prologue are already making weak AI. Never mind, if it is the program which will ask one question or a speech recognition system. Developing of weak AI is accessible for everyone. Such skills can intrigue every software development firm. Hope, it will inspire you to exercise with such an interesting theme.

There is a version that strong AI creation is impossible. According to this opinion, the approach to creating the artificial intelligence as just the brain replica is incorrect. Another reason why strong AI creation mustn’t be done is false because the brain is just a part of the whole organism. The human brain gives the signals that would be nothing without, for example, a spinal chord. So, to create a strong AI, programmers must develop the model of the whole organism.

Artificial Intelligence future

Technologies are fast-changing, and the approaches to perfection technologies are too. Artificial Intelligence as a modern approach is not evolving as fast as web or mobile development. It is well-known that the main goal of our life is to make existence of future generations easier, and strong AI has all chances to make this dream coming true. Artificial intelligence development will make people’s life like a dream. Some scientists believe that AI will present us immortality and a new stage of evolution. All routine job of humans, which is so familiar to everyone, will be done by robots. Unfortunately, there is a dark side of these beautiful thoughts. As Artificial Intelligence, particularly strong AI, will evolve itself, some day it can be realized that it’s not hard to conquer the world. Now we can’t say exactly what relationships will be between humans and robots. Someone thinks that continuing AI development leads to the death of humanity, others believe AI development will make ‘heaven on earth’, but only time will answer this question.