I'm going to attempt to classify all of artificial
intelligence or AI into seven types. And that's a tall order. But these seven types of AI
can largely be understood by examining two encompassing categories. There's AI capabilities,
and there's AI functionalities. So let's start with AI capabilities, and there are three. The
first of which is known as artificial narrow AI, which also goes by the rather unflattering name of
"weak AI". Now, on its face, that doesn't sound like a very interesting capability to start us off.
But actually, narrow AI is the only type of AI that exists today--it's all we currently have. Any
other form of AI is theoretical. So we can think of this as realized AI--that's the artificial
intelligence we have today. And theoretical AI, which is the artificial intelligence we may have
in the future. And now narrow AI can be trained to perform a narrow task, which, to be fair
to narrow AI, might be something that a human could not do as well as the AI can. But it can't
perform outside of its defined task. It does need us humans still to train it. So if narrow AI
represents all AI capabilities we have today, well, what else is there? Well, a favorite of
memes, science fiction, and betting markets is artificial general intelligence, also known as
AGI. And also known as "strong AI". To be clear, AGI is currently nothing more than a theoretical
concept. But here's the idea: AGI can use previous learnings and skills to accomplish new tasks
in a different context, without the need for us human beings to train the underlying models.
If AGI wants to learn how to perform a new task, it will figure it out by itself. Which
sounds... disconcerting. But, but look, we haven't even talked about the third type of AI
capability yet. And that's artificial "super AI". If ever realized, super AI would think, reason,
learn, make judgments and possess cognitive abilities that surpass those of human beings.
The application's [possessing] super AI capabilities would have evolved beyond the point of catering
to humans sentiments and experiences, and would be able to feel emotions and have needs and possess
beliefs and desires of their own. Yeah. So let's park that cheery thought for now, and consider
the four types of AI based on functionalities. And we're back in the real world of realized
AI here--at least initially. So we can think of narrow AI as having two fundamental functions.
One of those is reactive machine AI. Now reactive machine AI are systems designed to perform a very
specific specialized task. Reactive AI stems from statistical math, and it can analyze vast amounts
of data to produce a seemingly intelligent output. We've had reactive AI for quite a long time. Back
in the late 1990s, IBM's chess playing supercomputer Deep Blue beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov by
analyzing the pieces on the board and predicting the probable outcomes of each move. That's a
specialized task with a lot of available data to create insights. The hallmark of reactive AI.
We can think of other narrow AI functionalities really as being classified as "limited memory
AI". Now this form of AI can recall past events and outcomes and monitor specific objects or
situations over time. It can use past and present moment data to decide on a course of action most
likely to help achieve a desired outcome. And as it's trained on more data over time, limited
memory AI can improve in performance. Think of your favorite generative AI chatbot, which relies
on limited memory AI capabilities to predict the next word or the next phrase or the next visual
element within the context it's generating. Okay, so what about our two theoretical AI capabilities?
Well, if we look at AGI, we have to think about "theory of mind AI". Now, this would understand
the thoughts and emotions of other entities, specifically us, so it could infer human motives
and reasoning and personalize its interactions with individuals based on their unique emotional
needs and intentions. And actually, emotion AI is a theory of mind AI currently in development.
AI researchers hope it will have the ability to analyze voices, images and other kinds of data
to understand and respond to human feelings. Finally! An AI that really understands me. And
then finally, under super AI, we have "self-aware AI". Winning my personal award for the scariest AI
of all, it would have the ability to understand its own internal conditions and traits, leading to
its own set of emotions, needs and beliefs. Look, we've covered seven types of AI, and only three
of them actually exist today! There is still so much to be learned and discovered. But as
those advancements happen, at least here we have a taxonomy of AI types that will tell
us how far along we are on our AI journey.
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