Moravec's paradox

It's an interesting observation and certainly something one needs to be aware of in thinking about intelligent systems but I'm not convinced that the notion that perception is intrinsically harder than logic is quite true. I think the difficulty of a problem is highly dependent on the representations and models used. Computers were developed based on logical and mathematical principles so it makes sense that they are, in some sense, "good" at these kinds of problems. On the other hand…

And this is why logistics companies aren't replacing humans with robots very quickly. Simply put, robots today do not have the combination of speed, accuracy, gentleness, strength and 'hand-eye' coordination needed to do simple tasks that a 6 year old could learn in minutes. You want a 4 ton pallet lifted from spot A to spot B? There's a robot arm that can do that same task over and over flawlessly. You move that pallet 12 inches to the left…

>Moravec's paradox is the discovery by artificial intelligence and robotics researchers that, contrary to traditional assumptions, high-level reasoning requires very little computation, but low-level sensorimotor skills require enormous computational resources. The principle was articulated by Hans Moravec, Rodney Brooks, Marvin Minsky and others in the 1980s Yeah, so where's this "high level reasoning", 30+ years on?

People who think that high-level reasoning is easy compared to sensorimotor skills have successfully implemented neither and lack both. -- Benjamin Franklin Neural networks can be used to balance robots. They can't be used to generate Agda proofs of non-trivial theorems, or C programs that do something useful, etc.