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That's a problem I have with the paradox. While it's true for some high level cognitive skills, it's not true in general. The general purpose AI has proven to b

That's a problem I have with the paradox. While it's true for some high level cognitive skills, it's not true in general. The general purpose AI has proven to be as hard or harder than the sensory-motor skills. Otherwise, we would have HAL-like computers.

mannykannot 7y ago
Indeed. At the time the paradox was proposed, there had not been much progress in natural language understanding, so the scope of what it considers to be AI has at least one important part missing.
- Retric 7y ago
  Language is a low level task. You don’t think about decoding “purple” or associating it with a color that’s automatic. Similarly decoding letter shapes etc. Even forming responses is very automatic. You yell “Stop” you don’t think what’s the best phrase to convey they are about to hit a car. Though like breathing you can pay attention and do something else.
  - mannykannot 7y ago
    To the contrary, of all the cognitive capabilities that evolution has bestowed on us, I think language is clearly the highest.
    - Retric 7y ago
      Defining your own scale is fine. But, don’t be confused when you are the only one using it. High vs low level tasks are defined in terms of what you can do while doing the task. You can be thinking about a math problem for example while talking with someone.
      - mannykannot 7y ago
        I will agree that tasks like parsing sounds and forming words are low-level tasks, but my original post was about understanding the meaning of language, and it is not just in my own private lexicon that this is regarded as a higher cognitive process, as a brief search will reveal (e.g. [1].) With regard to your ranking test, is it talking with someone or thinking about a math problem that gets ranked as low-level? It would seem to work either way, in which case, I guess it would be both. [1] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/higher+cognitive+process https://www.thefreedictionary.com/higher+cognitive+process
        Retric 7y ago
        Medicine, psychology, and neuroscience all have different definitions of this stuff. understanding the meaning of language Understanding is vague in these terms. You can notice someone calling your name while distracted with other activities. That’s an automatic process and assigning meaning for each word in English is a difficult task. How do you teach a computer what cells are in the abstract? There is also some high level language decoding where people extract meaning from poetry etc. But, we need to get the low level task done first. PS: As to ranking, their are a lot of high level tasks you can’t do at the same time. Often described as things that take concentration, but few language tasks make this list.
        mannykannot 7y ago
        > Medicine, psychology, and neuroscience all have different definitions of this stuff. Well, maybe, but is it conventional usage in any of those fields to call the cognitive processes involved in producing and understanding linguistic communication low-level? Regardless, my ranking it high-level is not just my private usage, as you claimed. In fact, I would guess that it is a more conventional ranking than the one that seems to be implied by your method. > How do you teach a computer what cells are in the abstract? Well, precisely, it's at a higher level of abstraction than just picking out the word (I am pretty sure that's a conventional usage of 'higher'.) >There is also some high level language decoding where people extract meaning from poetry, etc. Poetry may be particularly obtuse, but that does not make all other meaning-extraction low-level. A lot of it, IMHO, belongs in that 'etc.' PS to your PS: There are also concentration-demanding motor skills. And the point about your ranking method is that it seems to put thinking about a math problem at the same level as talking with someone, which you are claiming is low-level.
deleted 7y ago
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scottlocklin 7y ago
Put it in historical context; the mainframes of Moravec's day were less powerful than a microcontroller which controls the windshield wiper in your car. The fact that guys like Moravec were able to build checkers computers, things that could "talk" (at least in the meta-x emacs sense), things that could diagnose infectious diseases as well as a doctor, and things which did applied mathematics (those integrals didn't integrate themselves back in the day) is absolutely astounding. The fact that they we still can't generally solve crap like the lost robot problem which insects are able to handle should also strike you as astounding. That's what the Moravec paradox means. Stuff humans find difficult due to logic, abstraction and theory are often easy for computers, and stuff that bugs can do naturally are still impossible for computers.

mannykannot 7y ago

Indeed. At the time the paradox was proposed, there had not been much progress in natural language understanding, so the scope of what it considers to be AI has at least one important part missing.

Retric 7y ago
Language is a low level task. You don’t think about decoding “purple” or associating it with a color that’s automatic. Similarly decoding letter shapes etc. Even forming responses is very automatic. You yell “Stop” you don’t think what’s the best phrase to convey they are about to hit a car. Though like breathing you can pay attention and do something else.
- mannykannot 7y ago
  To the contrary, of all the cognitive capabilities that evolution has bestowed on us, I think language is clearly the highest.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Defining your own scale is fine. But, don’t be confused when you are the only one using it. High vs low level tasks are defined in terms of what you can do while doing the task. You can be thinking about a math problem for example while talking with someone.
    - mannykannot 7y ago
      I will agree that tasks like parsing sounds and forming words are low-level tasks, but my original post was about understanding the meaning of language, and it is not just in my own private lexicon that this is regarded as a higher cognitive process, as a brief search will reveal (e.g. [1].) With regard to your ranking test, is it talking with someone or thinking about a math problem that gets ranked as low-level? It would seem to work either way, in which case, I guess it would be both. [1] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/higher+cognitive+process https://www.thefreedictionary.com/higher+cognitive+process
      - Retric 7y ago
        Medicine, psychology, and neuroscience all have different definitions of this stuff. understanding the meaning of language Understanding is vague in these terms. You can notice someone calling your name while distracted with other activities. That’s an automatic process and assigning meaning for each word in English is a difficult task. How do you teach a computer what cells are in the abstract? There is also some high level language decoding where people extract meaning from poetry etc. But, we need to get the low level task done first. PS: As to ranking, their are a lot of high level tasks you can’t do at the same time. Often described as things that take concentration, but few language tasks make this list.
        mannykannot 7y ago
        > Medicine, psychology, and neuroscience all have different definitions of this stuff. Well, maybe, but is it conventional usage in any of those fields to call the cognitive processes involved in producing and understanding linguistic communication low-level? Regardless, my ranking it high-level is not just my private usage, as you claimed. In fact, I would guess that it is a more conventional ranking than the one that seems to be implied by your method. > How do you teach a computer what cells are in the abstract? Well, precisely, it's at a higher level of abstraction than just picking out the word (I am pretty sure that's a conventional usage of 'higher'.) >There is also some high level language decoding where people extract meaning from poetry, etc. Poetry may be particularly obtuse, but that does not make all other meaning-extraction low-level. A lot of it, IMHO, belongs in that 'etc.' PS to your PS: There are also concentration-demanding motor skills. And the point about your ranking method is that it seems to put thinking about a math problem at the same level as talking with someone, which you are claiming is low-level.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

scottlocklin 7y ago

Put it in historical context; the mainframes of Moravec's day were less powerful than a microcontroller which controls the windshield wiper in your car. The fact that guys like Moravec were able to build checkers computers, things that could "talk" (at least in the meta-x emacs sense), things that could diagnose infectious diseases as well as a doctor, and things which did applied mathematics (those integrals didn't integrate themselves back in the day) is absolutely astounding. The fact that they we still can't generally solve crap like the lost robot problem which insects are able to handle should also strike you as astounding. That's what the Moravec paradox means. Stuff humans find difficult due to logic, abstraction and theory are often easy for computers, and stuff that bugs can do naturally are still impossible for computers.