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Moravec's Paradox - Sketchplanations

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On the capabilities of machines and people In his 1988 book Mind Children, Austrian robotics researcher Hans Moravec, wrote: “…as the number of demonstrations has mounted, it has become clear that it is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult-level performance in solving problems such as intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception or mobility.” This surprising pattern became known as Moravec’s Paradox, the idea that machines often do well at things people find hard, and do poorly at what is easy for us. As classic examples: We consider chess grandmasters to be among the most intelligent people on the planet, yet computers eventually triumphed over them. A young child can (in principle) place raspberries gently on a plate, stack glasses in a dishwasher, read a friend's emotions, crawl up some stairs, or play with a dog, and yet our machines still find this hard. It sounds rather reasonable. That Google Maps can, in seconds, provide me with an optimised walking route between places hundreds of miles apart is a source of consistent amazement for me. Yet it’s challenging for a self-driving car to understand if a traffic official is gesturing for it to slow down, something I find effortless. Yet some of the traditional examples of Moravec’s paradox now feel dated. As Hans said, “Unfortunately for humanlike robots, computers are at their worst trying to do the things most natural to humans, such as seeing, hearing, manipulating objects, learning languages, and commonsense reasoning.” Machines have now made great strides in most of these. Princeton Computer Science Professor Arvind Narayanan, thinks Moravec’s Paradox is neither useful nor true. Yet UC Berkeley Robotics Professor Ken Goldberg cautions that robotics still faces a “100,000 year data gap.” He explains that the extraordinary capabilities of models that produced the AI capabilities we all know are created fr

Download Prints Copied! 👇 Get new sketches each week On the capabilities of machines and people In his 1988 book Mind Children , Austrian robotics researcher Hans Moravec, wrote : “…as the number of demonstrations has mounted, it has become clear that it is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult-level performance in solving problems such as intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception or mobility.” This surprising pattern became known as Moravec’s Paradox, the idea that machines…

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