Part 13, March 12, 2021 - Strong vs. weak AI (Reading time: 2 minutes)
If you want a lover
I'll do anything you ask me to. Leonard Cohen, I’m your man, 1988
I'll do anything you ask me to. Leonard Cohen, I’m your man, 1988 Tom tries to seduce Alma with words. It’s his task, that is what he was built for. Tom is a humanoid, an Artificial Intelligence designed like a human. Following Leonard Cohen by doing everything what Alma desires for is Tom's initial strategy – without results. But Tom is learning, so, he does what an Artificial Intelligence essentially does. He refines his approach and, in the end, Alma falls in love with Tom. Although she has consciously admitted to this experiment and knows from the beginning, that Tom is a machine.
This is the plot of the short story “I’m Your Man” by Emma Braslavsky. She translated the title of a Leonard Cohen song into German, and also adopted the first two lines of the lyrics. “Ich bin dein Mensch” was published as part of the story collection "2029 - Geschichten von morgen" by Suhrkamp two years ago. According to the publisher, it is a collection of “intense, exciting and emotional near-future stories.” The film version of Braslavsky's story was presented at this year's festival “Berlinale” and is scheduled for release in June (English movie title again: “I’m Your Man”).
Humanoid robots equipped with Artificial Intelligence are both, man's dream and nightmare. Long ago, in Greek mythology, Pygmalion creates a statue from ivory, brought to life by Venus, the goddess of love. In Middle Ages, abstruse legends tell of Golem, built of clay, of enormous size and strength and weird willingness to serve his master. Modern stories spin yarns about “androids” like the killing machine “Terminator” in the film of the same name, include a depressive robot like “Dave”, at a slant to suicide, in “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, or zoom in on a harmless, charming AI like “Tom”.
They are all so-called “Strong AI”. They have consciousness and will and they make decisions. They are portrayed as droll or funny sometimes, but more often as threatening, as morally and ethically underdeveloped AI with the ambition to dominate over humans. This is science fiction.
All AI that really exists today is “Weak AI“: the subsumption of self-learning statistical methods. We can use it to make the world a better place. Or not, for example when AI selects applicants, but discriminates against women, foreigners and others. If Weak AI seemingly has good or bad moral concepts, they were given to it by human programmers, probably without intention.
Few words explain the difference between Strong AI and Weak AI: Strong AI is literature, cinema, Hollywood. Weak AI, on the other hand, is almost omnipresent reality.
When Strong AI will become real? According to most experts, this day is very far away. Most likely, it won’t happen until 2029, the “near-future” forecast of the Suhrkamp publishing house. What about 2200, as Prof. Ralf Otte, AI expert at Ulm University of Applied Sciences, oracularly does foresee?
However, there is enough time to search for an AI-capable Industrial PC on omtec.de to tackle challenges apart from Hollywood!