The Difference between Life and Machine

Machines are very useful. However, the tasks they could do are constrained by many factors and grow slowly now. To explore the potential of AI to sustain the growth, people need understand the differences between life and machines
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Mechanical clocks and watches with extremely high precision and sophistication appeared long, long ago before computers, as well as those old automatons. The steam engines and centrifugal governors back in 18th century can generate power much better than humans. However, they do not have AI. They are only machines.

It is obvious there are still huge differences between life and current machines.

The difficult part is what cause the differences and how much could be reduced. Similiar debates on this topic were repeated again and again for decades without much progress.

This is a clear indication we do not have a proper theoretic framework for AI yet to anwser this question. We even cannot define the most basic concept for AI:the intelligence itself.

Doing some work better than humans is not an evidence of intelligence. A great machine does not necessarily have great AI, which is still very limited in its applications.

There is a concept: strong AI, which means: "the intelligence of a machine that can successfully perform any intellectual task that a human being can" (from wikipedia). Obvious, there is not strong AI so far.

We even do not have a way to evaluate the current status, to measure how far away an AI systems are from strong AI, which may causes illusions to many people.

We have a concept: weak AI, which does not "match or exceed the capabilities of human beings, as opposed to strong AI" (from wikipedia). However weak AI is only a vague phrase, which does not measure how strong or how weak an AI system is.

This is another indication people do not have a proper theoretic framework for AI so far.

To have a good estimation how strong an AI system is, we could redefine strong AI as strong human AI, and break down the big category of weak AI into those such as:
1) strong ape AI, match or exceed apes' capability in all intellectual aspects
2) strong monkey AI, match or exceed monkeys' capability in all intellectual aspects
3) strong cat AI, match or exceed cats' capability in all intellectual aspects
4) strong bee AI, match or exceed bees' capability in all intellectual aspects
5) strong fish AI, match or exceed fishes' capability in all intellectual aspects
etc...

People could add more as they like. When using these fine-grained categories, at least people can have clear sense what are the differences between AI systems and a specific type of life.

Looks we don't have strong cat AI yet. Technical singularity is still far away.

Strong human AI is a superset of both life and machine. We don't know if it is achievable or not yet. It remains as the last boundary to cross between life and machine. I propose a three-level model of Life, Psychology and Intelligence. Hope further research on this model could illustrate how close machines could be made to life and humans.