AI Basics

Updated on February 26, 2024

• 8 min read
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Written by Ethan Wilson

Strong and Weak AI Examples

As artificial intelligence keeps advancing, we continue to learn more about the differences in intelligence with this technology. Most AI experts believe that the technology still has a way to go before we could say that it’s smarter than humans. Nevertheless, we could one day have this technology available, so understanding the difference between examples of strong AI and examples of weak AI could allow you to better navigate this complex realm.

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What is Strong AI?

Strong AI offers us the full capabilities of thinking in the same way that humans do. In the perfect world, strong AI will become as intelligent or more intelligent than the human mind. Society will truly achieve this level of AI when their cognitive abilities rival humans.

Examples of Strong AI

When it comes to strong AI, let’s take a couple of examples of it. First, you could use strong AI in pattern and image recognition. You might, for example, see pattern recognition used in cybersecurity. Whenever a cyber threat could potentially attack the network, AI will use past examples of cyberattacks from a vast trove of data. It uses this data to neutralize the threat and stop it before it can hurt your network. Strong AI can also help with image recognition. For instance, with the help of AI it is possible to detect and catch a criminal in a crowd by recognizing his face. Also, one of the examples where you would use image recognition with AI includes for cases like face recognition used on smartphones. Another different industry where they use strong AI with image recognition includes animal monitoring for farming. For example, the AI can remotely identify diseases in livestock. This shows you some general cases where you might encounter strong AI.

What is Weak AI?

Occasionally, you will hear people call it narrow AI because of its limited scope. Weak AI was designed for a narrow purpose, and it won’t possess human intelligence. Some experts dislike the term weak AI because it implies that the AI can’t perform its functions as well. This is far from the truth. Weak AI will have a narrow set of functions that it must perform, often repetitive in nature. This AI will not possess self awareness nor was it designed to have a human-like intelligence.

Examples of Weak AI

Weak AI will have more limitations in terms of autonomy, and its overall capabilities will be weaker than strong AI. You see many use cases of weak AI already at its finest. True strong AI hasn’t yet been achieved. Weak AI will perform repetitive tasks much faster than humans. Weak AI can also work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, far superior to the human’s abilities. This form of AI will have less learning capabilities because it only learns from a narrow scope compared to strong AI.

An example of weak AI used is for marketing. You can use it for targeted customer data. Another example is with customer service chatbots and virtual assistants. AI email assistants are also narrow AI in that they help you to perform repetitive tasks, such as checking your emails and responding to customers. If you’re looking for a software that can help you with emails, check out AImReply. This AI email writer will help you to keep ahead of your emails, and many business owners use it to cut down on the amount of time that they spend on emails.

Weak AI is also being used to provide students with an intelligent tutoring system. This is one of those systems where it can provide students with feedback that also allows them to personalize their learning. In the field of healthcare, weak AI has been utilized to give accurate diagnoses, personalized treatments, and drug discovery.

Understanding Weak AI vs Strong AI

With that wording, you’d automatically think of strong AI as superior to weak AI, but they just differ in function. Each presents their own set of advantages and disadvantages. Let’s take a look at each one.

Weak AI

Advantages:

• Fast and accurate for making decisions
• Increased production and efficiency
• Automates routine and repetitive tasks
• Highly accurate in a specialized field of expertise
• Handles large amounts of data with ease
• Can accurately forecast results

Disadvantages:

• The ability to complete tasks limited to only narrow domains
• Can’t adapt well to things outside of its narrow realm
• Weak AI has a dependence on data to function correctly

Strong AI

Advantages:

• Performs any task that humans can perform
• Works autonomously and without the need for humans to intervene
• May one day have the same cognitive abilities as humans
• Able to solve complex problems without much for limitations
• Analyzes and makes creative solutions to complex problems
• Designed to one day be as smart or smarter than humans

Disadvantages:

• Developing strong AI requires costly lab equipment and techniques
• May lead to a decrease in employment
• Humans may struggle to control strong AI if it’s one day smarter than them
• Comes with strong ethical concerns

Understanding Strong AI and Its Applications

Strong AI will exhibit a greater level of intelligence because it can work in multiple fields. When you take the concept of strong AI and try to fulfill the plan for it, you would get a fictional character like Wall-E. Basically, it can accomplish anything that a human could do. This type of AI remains in its infancy stages, and compared to weak AI, it’s the less common form of AI. Some of the potential applications for strong AI include:

Deciphering Human Thoughts and Emotions

This AI will read the thoughts of humans and try to understand them better. In the future, it may prove applicable to marketing, psychology, and understanding the thoughts and feelings of living beings.

Ability to Reason

Besides mathematical reasoning, most AI experts hope that this will allow strong AI to understand the reasoning of people. It will take the time to consider its options before making a decision. In some cases, the AI may deviate from the human course of action if it sees an even wiser course of action.

Adapt to Situations Easily

The strong AI will have the ability to adapt to a variety of new settings pulling from data that it encountered in the past. This will differ greatly from weak AI because when you put weak AI outside of its intended setting, it will be next to useless. It will not adapt in the same way that strong AI was intended to adapt.

Understanding Weak AI and Its Applications

You can use weak AI in a variety of settings because of its ability to create easily. Weak AI, in fact, has many more applications than strong AI because it specializes in specific things. It won’t do much good outside of its intended purpose, but it will help you out in a big way when you put it to the use that it was intended. Let’s take a look at its applications and when you might be using weak AI.

Natural Language Processing

Also referred to as NLP, natural language processing refers to the AI’s ability to understand, manipulate, and generate human language. This is the branch where an AI email assistant like AImReply would belong. It uses a narrow AI system to perform specific tasks, such as analyzing text, generating and translating it, or sending out emails.

Robotics

Robotics is weak AI because of using it to perform specific tasks like getting the robot to move in a specific way. It controls the motion and behavior of the robot.

Transportation

AI in the use of transportation will look at ways to reduce fuel consumption and improve traffic efficiency. It will also optimize your route to reduce the amount of time taken to get to your destination.

Conclusion

Would you like to start leveraging AI today? One of the simple ways to realize the benefits is through something as easy as an AI email assistant. AImReply is a form of weak AI, and this software is like a specialist - basically, your personal assistant,  meant to help you with eliminating mundane tasks. People will save as much as 50% on emails when they start using an AI tool. AImReply can help a variety of professionals such as business executives, freelancers, entrepreneurs, and customer service staff. This tool is highly flexible in that you can use it for a variety of applications like request letters, proposals, commercial correspondence, and answering customers. Check it out to see for yourself.

Written by Ethan Wilson

Author, Expert in Email Strategy and Artificial Intelligence