Strong AI and Weak AI: The Real Story, Plus Applicability For Self-Driving Cars

Dr. Lance Eliot, AI Insider

[Ed. Note: For reader’s interested in Dr. Eliot’s ongoing business analyses about the advent of self-driving cars, see his online Forbes column: https://forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/ and his podcast: http://ai-selfdriving-cars.libsyn.com/website

Time to set the record straight about Strong AI versus Weak AI.

Let’s consider what is being incorrectly stated and then make our way to the correct understanding about the matter.

Some speak of weak AI as though it is AI that is wimpy and not up to the same capabilities as strong AI, including that weak AI is decidedly slower, or much less optimized, or otherwise inevitably and unarguably feebler in its AI capacities. That’s not it.

Another form of distortion is to use “narrow” AI, which generally refers to AI that will only work in a narrowly-defined domain such as in a specific medical use or in a particular financial analysis use, and equate it with weak AI, while presumably strong AI is broader and more all-encompassing. That’s not it either.

To understand what Strong AI and Weak AI are all about, we need to briefly turn back the clock to when the debate about such aspects was at a feverish pitch. Hark back to…