Artificial Intelligence…Doing What?!?
While pop-culture describes Artificial Intelligence as human-eliminating robots from Skynet or uber-intelligent programs like J.A.R.V.I.S — Artificial Intelligence is the development of machines that can think like humans…but not in the way you might think. (Yes, pun intended)
From social media applications on our phones to the red-light cameras detecting distracted drivers at intersections, A.I. has become an inescapable reality. Since I can guarantee you have used A.I. before, why don’t I provide a brief introduction?
Current Artificial Intelligence Technology
Even with groundbreaking discoveries every day, our society is still at a stage called “Artificial Narrow Intelligence”(ANI) or “Weak A.I.”. Essentially, this refers to applying A.I. only to specific tasks. The name Weak A.I. comes from the fact that these machines are nowhere close to having human intelligence, but this A.I. is by no means “weak”. While this is the lowest tier, this technology is exponentially powerful. Artificial Narrow Intelligence can do anything from detecting objects from photos, deciding which social media posts to put on your feed, and even helping with COVID-19 research. This is currently the stage of Artificial Intelligence we are at currently. Let’s look at the next tier of Artificial Intelligence.
Artificial General Intelligence
The next tier we have is “Artificial General Intelligence”. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), also known as “Strong A.I.”, involves machines with the ability to do any intellectual tasks a human can do. For example, if I ask a machine to sort through dozen documents a machine would not have any problems, however, if I asked a machine to grab some tomatoes from the grocery stores, multiple problems would arise. Something that many do not realize is that machines cannot actually “think” yet. In other words, machines do not have the consciousness to be able to reason for themselves at our current technological stage. Sure machines have immensely strong processing units and can perform complicated computational tasks, but they definitely will not be able to grab a pizza from the nearest Domino’s 😞. Essentially, this is the reason why were are still stuck at ANI: we have not yet developed a machine that can reason to safely call “Artificial General Intelligence”. Let’s move on to the final stage of Artificial Intelligence.
Artificial Super Intelligence
The last tier of A.I. is called “Artificial Super Intelligence”. Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) is referring to a time when computers will surpass humans in all respects. Now, we are REALLY FAR from ASI, but this is essentially when machines will take over the world. There are many theories and speculations about this stage, but pop-culture helps us to picture it best, think The Terminator. These machines are faster, efficient, smarter than any other human…not to mention downright scary.
Congratulations! You now know more about A.I. than the average human being. I hope this gave you a bit more insight as to what A.I. will look like in the future. While technologies such as AGI and ASI can certainly be scary to think about…let’s keep in mind a quote about Artificial Intelligence from MIT professor Rodney Brooks, “Artificial Intelligence is a tool, not a threat.”
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Until the next article!
Rohan
