By Rajan Kumar
AI technologies are categorized by their capacity to mimic human characteristics, the technology they use to do this, their real-world applications, and the theory of mind, which we’ll discuss in more depth below. Artificial Intelligence is categorized into three broad categories. Here is the brief:-
Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)
Also known as Weak AI, ANI is the stage of Artificial Intelligence involving machines that can perform only a narrowly defined set of specific tasks. At this stage, the machine does not possess any thinking ability, it just performs a set of pre-defined functions. Examples of Weak AI include Siri, Alexa, Self-driving cars, Alpha-Go, Sophia the humanoid, and so on. Almost all the AI-based systems built to this date fall under the category of Weak AI.
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
Also known as Strong AI, AGI is the stage in the evolution of Artificial Intelligence wherein machines will possess the ability to think and make decisions just like us humans. There are currently no existing examples of Strong AI, however, it is believed that we will soon be able to create machines that are as smart as humans. Strong AI is considered a threat to human existence by many scientists, including Stephen Hawking who stated that:
“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race…. It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded.”
Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)
Artificial Super Intelligence is the stage of Artificial Intelligence when the capability of computers will surpass human beings. ASI is currently a hypothetical situation as depicted in movies and science fiction books, where machines have taken over the world. Machines are not very far from reaching this stage taking into consideration our current pace.
Advantages of Artificial Intelligence
- High Accuracy with fewer errors: AI machines or systems are prone to fewer errors and high accuracy as it takes decisions as per pre-experience or information.
- High-Speed: AI systems can be of very high speed and fast-decision making, because of that AI systems can beat a chess champion in the Chess game.
- High reliability: AI machines are highly reliable and can perform the same action multiple times with high accuracy.
- Useful for risky areas: AI machines can be helpful in situations such as defusing a bomb, exploring the ocean floor, where employing a human can be risky.
- Digital Assistant: AI can be very useful to provide digital assistant to the users such as AI technology is currently used by various E-commerce websites to show the products as per customer requirement.
- Useful as a public utility: AI can be very useful for public utilities such as a self-driving car which can make our journey safer and hassle-free, facial recognition for security purposes, Natural language processing to communicate with the human in human language, etc.
Disadvantages of Artificial Intelligence
Every technology has some disadvantages, and the same goes for Artificial intelligence. Being so advantageous technology still, it has some disadvantages which we need to keep in our mind while creating an AI system. Following are the disadvantages of AI:
- High Cost: The hardware and software requirement of AI is very costly as it requires lots of maintenance to meet current world requirements.
- Can’t think out of the box: Even we are making smarter machines with AI, but still they cannot work out of the box, as the robot will only do that work for which they are trained, or programmed.
- No feelings and emotions: AI machines can be an outstanding performer, but still it does not have the feeling so it cannot make any kind of emotional attachment with human, and may sometime be harmful to users if the proper care is not taken.
- Increase dependency on machines: With the increment of technology, people are getting more dependent on devices and hence they are losing their mental capabilities.
- No Original Creativity: As humans are so creative and can imagine some new ideas but still AI machines cannot beat this power of human intelligence and cannot be creative and imaginative.
