Editing Artificial general intelligence (section)

=== "Strong AI" as defined in philosophy ===
In 1980, philosopher [[John Searle]] coined the term "strong AI" as part of his [[Chinese room]] argument.<ref>{{Harvnb|Searle|1980}}</ref> He proposed a distinction between two hypotheses about artificial intelligence:{{Efn|As defined in a standard AI textbook: "The assertion that machines could possibly act intelligently (or, perhaps better, act as if they were intelligent) is called the 'weak AI' hypothesis by philosophers, and the assertion that machines that do so are actually thinking (as opposed to simulating thinking) is called the 'strong AI' hypothesis."{{Sfn|Russell|Norvig|2003}}}}

* '''Strong AI hypothesis''': An artificial intelligence system can have "a mind" and "consciousness".
* '''Weak AI hypothesis''': An artificial intelligence system can (only) ''act like'' it thinks and has a mind and consciousness.

The first one he called "strong" because it makes a ''stronger'' statement: it assumes something special has happened to the machine that goes beyond those abilities that we can test. The behaviour of a "weak AI" machine would be precisely identical to a "strong AI" machine, but the latter would also have subjective conscious experience. This usage is also common in academic AI research and textbooks.<ref>For example:

* {{Harvnb|Russell|Norvig|2003}},
* [http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O87-strongAI.html Oxford University Press Dictionary of Psychology] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071203103022/http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O87-strongAI.html|date=3 December 2007}} (quoted in " Encyclopedia.com"),
* [http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/phil.html MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080719074502/http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/phil.html|date=19 July 2008}} (quoted in "AITopics"),
* [http://www.cbhd.org/resources/biotech/tongen_2003-11-07.htm Will Biological Computers Enable Artificially Intelligent Machines to Become Persons?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080513031753/http://www.cbhd.org/resources/biotech/tongen_2003-11-07.htm|date=13 May 2008}} Anthony Tongen</ref>

In contrast to Searle and mainstream AI, some futurists such as [[Ray Kurzweil]] use the term "strong AI" to mean "human level artificial general intelligence".<ref name="K"/> This is not the same as Searle's [[Chinese room#Strong AI|strong AI]], unless it is assumed that [[consciousness]] is necessary for human-level AGI. Academic philosophers such as Searle do not believe that is the case, and to most artificial intelligence researchers the question is out-of-scope.{{Sfn|Russell|Norvig|2003|p=947}}

Mainstream AI is most interested in how a program ''behaves''.<ref>though see [[Explainable artificial intelligence]] for curiosity by the field about why a program behaves the way it does</ref> According to [[Stuart J. Russell|Russell]] and [[Peter Norvig|Norvig]], "as long as the program works, they don't care if you call it real or a simulation."{{Sfn|Russell|Norvig|2003|p=947}} If the program can behave ''as if'' it has a mind, then there is no need to know if it ''actually'' has mind – indeed, there would be no way to tell. For AI research, Searle's "weak AI hypothesis" is equivalent to the statement "artificial general intelligence is possible". Thus, according to Russell and Norvig, "most AI researchers take the weak AI hypothesis for granted, and don't care about the strong AI hypothesis."{{Sfn|Russell|Norvig|2003|p=947}} Thus, for academic AI research, "Strong AI" and "AGI" are two different things.