Lesson 9 of 1234
Specialist AI vs. Do-Everything AI
Some AI can do only one thing. Other AI can try many things. And some people dream of an AI that can do anything. Let's sort them out.
Lesson map
What this lesson covers
Learning path
The main moves in order
- 1AI Comes in Flavors
- 2narrow AI
- 3general AI
- 4AGI
Concept cluster
Terms to connect while reading
Section 1
AI Comes in Flavors
Not all AI is the same. Some AI is like a specialist doctor: super good at one thing and nothing else. Other AI is like a helpful friend who tries to help with lots of things.
Narrow AI
Narrow AI does one job. The AI that picks songs for you. The AI that finds spam in your email. The AI that beats people at chess. Each one is great at its one thing but cannot do anything else.
- A spam filter: good at spotting junk email, bad at telling jokes
- A chess AI: beats world champions, cannot tie a shoe
- A face unlocker: spots your face, knows nothing about grammar
General AI (the kind you chat with)
Then there is AI like Claude and ChatGPT. These can answer questions, write stories, help with homework, and code a game. They are much more flexible. We call them general AI, because they are more general-purpose.
AGI, the dream level
Some scientists dream of making AGI, which stands for Artificial General Intelligence. AGI would be as smart as a person at every kind of task, and maybe even smarter. We do not have AGI yet, and nobody fully agrees on what it would even look like.
“Today's AI is amazing, but it is not a person, and it is not all-knowing.”
Key terms in this lesson
The big idea: AI lives on a scale. Specialist AI is simple and strong. Chat AI is more general. AGI is the big dream that is still far away.
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