Approaches to AI
- Strong AI: aims to build machines that can truly reason and solve problems. These machines should be self aware and their overall intellectual ability needs to be indistinguishable from that of a human being. Excessive optimism in the 1950s and 1960s concerning strong AI has given way to an appreciation of the extreme difficulty of the problem. Strong AI maintains that suitably programmed machines are capable of cognitive mental states.
- Weak AI: deals with the creation of some form of computer-based artificial intelligence that cannot truly reason and solve problems, but can act as if it were intelligent. Weak AI holds that suitably programmed machines can simulate human cognition.
- Applied AI: aims to produce commercially viable "smart" systems such as, for example, a security system that is able to recognise the faces of people who are permitted to enter a particular building. Applied AI has already enjoyed considerable success.
- Cognitive AI: computers are used to test theories about how the human mind works--for example, theories about how we recognize faces and other objects, or about how we solve abstract problems.
