All types of AI

The main types of AI are categorized based on their capabilities and functionality (the latter being a more theoretical classification).

🧠 AI Types by Capability (Current State)

These categories describe the scope of the AI's intelligence relative to a human's.

Narrow AI (or Weak AI): This is the only type of AI that currently exists, designed and trained to perform a specific, narrow set of tasks. It operates under constraints and cannot function beyond its programmed capabilities, like a virtual assistant or a spam filter.
General AI (or Strong AI / AGI): This hypothetical AI would possess the ability to understand, learn, and apply its intelligence to solve any problem, just like a human being. AGI is the goal of many AI researchers and is still considered a theoretical future development.
Superintelligent AI (or ASI): A theoretical future AI that would surpass human intelligence in virtually every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom, and social skills. It would be vastly more capable than the best human mind across all domains.

This classification system, proposed by AI scientist Arend Hintze, describes the stages of AI development.

Reactive Machines: This is the most basic and oldest type of AI, designed to react only to the present situation without using past experience to inform decisions. It has no memory or concept of the past, like IBM's Deep Blue chess program.
Limited Memory AI: This type of AI can store past data for a short time and use it to make informed decisions for the near future. Most modern AI systems, like self-driving cars, fall into this category, using recent observations to guide current action.
Theory of Mind AI: This is a conceptual AI that would be able to understand human thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and intentions and interact socially based on that understanding. This level of AI does not exist yet but is the next major functional goal for researchers.
Self-Aware AI: A purely hypothetical AI that possesses consciousness, awareness of its own existence, internal states, and emotions, as well as an understanding of others. This is the most advanced stage of AI and is currently science fiction.
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