Moravec's Paradox

The Robots Need Our Help

Where will robots, artificial intelligence, and other hardware and software automated machines find their place in the global industry? Will it be in the factories, the web, the streets, the phone, or some other environment? The areas where humans fail, robots succeed, and vice versa are puzzle pieces that fit nicely together; this is unveiled thoroughly with Moravec's paradox ideology.

Moravec's Paradox is a crucial concept in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Hans Moravec, Rodney Brooks, Marvin Minsky, and others articulated it in the 1980s. The paradox is an observation that contrary to traditional assumptions, high-level reasoning requires very little computation, but sensorimotor and perception skills need enormous computational resources.

In 1988, Moravec wrote, "It is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult-level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility. " This means that tasks humans find hard, like mathematics and logic, are easy for computers, but tasks humans find easy, like walking and image recognition, are challenging (Thakur, 2019).

The lens of evolution can help us understand Moravec's paradox. Natural selection has designed the machinery used to implement all human skills biologically. Throughout their evolution, natural selection has tended to preserve design improvements and optimizations. The older a skill is, the more time natural selection has had to improve the design.

Abstract thought developed only recently; consequently, we should expect its implementation to be less efficient. As Moravec writes: "Encoded in the large, highly evolved sensory and motor portions of the human brain is a billion years of experience about the nature of the world and how to survive in it. The deliberate process we call reasoning is the thinnest veneer of human thought, effective only because it is supported by this much older and much more powerful, though usually unconscious, sensorimotor knowledge ".

In contrast, the "easy" things we do, like walking, recognizing colors and faces, manipulative capabilities of the hand, and other essential abilities, have been ingrained over a long and arduous process of natural selection and evolution. These abilities that we possess are primarily unconscious and come to us without any thought; we do them without any strain, making what looks challenging reasonably easy.

These unconscious processes are complex to reverse-engineer and teach to the computers, thus increasing the complexity of the problem, illustrating why it is hard to train computers to do things humans find easy, and this forms the crux of Moravec's Paradox. Mathematicians view math as occupying a different plane of existence than we are used to an imagined plane.

"It is an imagined world" (Woo, 2014, 03:19).

Moravec's Paradox is a phenomenon observed by robotics researcher Hans Moravec, in which tasks that are easy for humans to perform (e.g., motor or social skills) are complex for machines to replicate. In contrast, tasks that are difficult for humans (e.g., performing mathematical calculations or large-scale data analysis) are relatively easy for machines to accomplish (Agrawal, 2010).

The reason Moravec feels lies in the theory of evolution. Evolving from Apes to our present selves has taken us millions of years. The feat that this million-year evolution has achieved is not trivial. These million years of evolution have taught us how to survive in the world; our everyday activities, which might seem insignificant to carry out, result from millions of years of evolution. What evolution has done for us is that by its process, it has refined our system design implementations and preserved every improvement.

The reason is because of the structure of mathematics. Eddie Woo believes mathematics is fascinating because "it has a consistent system of rules that's meaningful" (Woo, 2014, 03:42). Following a consistent system of rules leads our machines to bottleneck when performing seemingly easy human tasks. A task such as walking across a room to retrieve a particular food from a fridge may seem easy. However, it is a monumental electrical, mechanical, software, and robotics engineering challenge for any modern-day machine. Tasks such as these allow the full brunt of the three-dimensional world to inhibit and challenge the environment of the subject performing the task. 

In conclusion, Moravec's Paradox highlights the challenges and complexities involved in AI and robotics. It underscores that what seems easy for humans can be incredibly difficult for machines and vice versa. This paradox continues to influence the development and understanding of AI and robotics.

References

Abram, Cleo. "I Challenged Boston Dynamics' Famous Atlas Robot." Www.youtube.com, 20 Nov. 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAgTgwak7ME. Accessed 25 Nov. 2023.

Agrawal, Kush. Kush Agrawal Study of the Phenomenon of the Moravec's Paradox. 2010.

Thakur, Vishal. "What Is Moravec's Paradox?" Science ABC, 16 Sept. 2019, www.scienceabc.com/innovation/what-is-moravecs-paradox-definition.html.

Woo, Eddie. "Why Is 0! = 1?" YouTube, 1 May 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=X32dce7_D48.