As a company specialising in AI and being Market Leaders and Pioneers of AI Solutions, we know that AI is now a term used in so many different ways it means different things to different people.
In 2021, all AI is 'Weak AI' - the application of useful intelligent functions to achieve specific and defined outcomes. The time may come when AI wakes up in the morning, and chooses what it wants to do today.
But that doesn't exist yet. For now, only Weak AI exists and that means that functions and outcomes are programmed. All AI that exists today is trained and goes through 'supervised learning'.
Today's AI is a tool that supports and enables planned uses. This means that not all AI is the same or equal. The strength and value of the AI solution is the skill and ability of the designer and trainer. Understanding the needs of the organisation, the Customers and Citizens who use it is definitive in how good it is.
For now, the benefits you get from your investment in AI depend entirely on the skill of the solution provider supplying it, just the same as any other technology.
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And The Future?
Smart solutions (based on AI) applicable to all organisations are just arriving now and are so compelling that they are here to stay.
Our research shows that this is less at the demand of the organisations themselves, but is being driven by service users. Users don't want 9-5, Monday to Friday service. They want always-on service, preferably Self-Service on their terms and on their device of choice.
In a recent survey of ours, 79% of users would rather contact their local council by App / Text (AI in other words) when suits them than by phone during Council opening hours.
So this new wave is here to stay.
This is based on AI techniques that exist now, and which Applied Cognition are market leaders in.
Strong AI is where technology develops decision making capabilities based on wants or emotion rather than algorithms.
This doesn't exist yet, and requires the development of a technology version of serotonin, or wine! Something that causes the technology to spontaneously make choices based on non-logical motivations.
Will we (humans) ever truly build this? We aren't convinced. This is the leap into true consciousness that Mary Shelley wrote of in Frankenstein. You would be able to recognise Strong AI because AI Physicals would raid the cookie jar even though they aren't hungry but just because they want one. This is the kind of irrationality that infers wants and desires beyond logical programming delivered by algorithms. 'Human-Like' Cognition.
We suspect though that this purist definition of Strong AI will be diluted in time.
It is easy enough to emulate this through machine learning and programmed Weak AI to act in a way that may look like independent choice, even though in fact there is no consciousness involved. It is just programmed reward hunting. This ability to programmatically hunt for reward is where we see Strong AI being redefined to in the near future, as it is a different level of AI capability that does require a name of it's own.
AI and AI-R is just the latest incarnation of technology, and as with all new technology advances they quickly become essential everyday tools.