[wongarsu]

There's long been a divide between what people call hard vs soft AI, or strong vs weak AI, or narrow vs general. The definitions are a bit fuzzy, but generally a hard AI or strong AI would be able to think for itself, develop strategies and skills, maybe have a sense of self. Soft AI in contrast is a mere tool where you put something in and get something out.

Now some people don't like using the term AI for soft/weak/narrow AI, because it's a fleeting definition, mostly applied to things that are novel and that we didn't think computers were able to do. Playing chess used to be considered AI, but a short time after AI beat the human chess world master it was no longer considered AI. If you buy a chess computer capable of beating Magnus Carlsen today that's considered a clever algorithm, no longer AI. You see the same thing playing out in real time right now with LLMs, where they go from AI to "just algorithms" in record time.