HomeNewsTrendsFeaturesStar Wars Day | Explainer: Difference between narrow AI and strong artificial intelligence

Star Wars Day | Explainer: Difference between narrow AI and strong artificial intelligence

May the fourth be with you: ChatGPT, Bard and other artificial intelligence today is lightyears from the Star Wars universe still.

May 04, 2023 / 15:03 IST
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Artificial General Intelligence is also known as robust AI, complete AI, and general intelligent action. Some academic sources even reserve the term "strong AI" for computer programmes that exhibit sentience or consciousness. (Photo: Lisa Fotios via Pexels)
Artificial General Intelligence is also known as robust AI, complete AI, and general intelligent action. Some academic sources even reserve the term "strong AI" for computer programmes that exhibit sentience or consciousness. (Photo: Lisa Fotios via Pexels)

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is a subset of AI that can generate new content, whereas artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the more ambitious aim of creating a machine with human-like intelligence across a broad range of domains.

AGI systems use software to reflect generalized human cognitive skills to solve complex problems. A machine with AGI can accomplish any intellectual task that a human can. While "generative AI" refers to a popular category of machine learning tools that can generate new text, images, videos, or sounds, based on a substantial training dataset.


Experts in the field have pointed out that despite the anthropomorphized language we use to discuss generative AI like ChatGPT (it can lie, hallucinate), in truth, generative AI does not think or have intent. Artificial general intelligence will be much closer to human cognition, eventually learning to improve itself.

Evolution of AGI

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Ray Kurzweil has used the word "narrow AI" to talk about making systems that do certain "intelligent" things in certain situations. For a narrow AI system, if the environment or behaviour is changed even a little bit, the system usually needs to be reprogrammed or reconfigured by a person to keep its level of intelligence. It is very different from natural, generally intelligent systems like people, which have a wide range of ways to adapt to changes in their goals or circumstances, such as by using "transfer learning" to generalize knowledge from one purpose or context to others.

The idea of AGI has come up as an opposite to "narrow AI", to describe systems that can generalize over a wide range of things. The AGI approach sees "general intelligence" as a property fundamentally different from the ability to do a specific job or solve a particular problem. Instead, it focuses on directly understanding this property and making systems that show it.