Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

Re:Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI by harimau777 on Wednesday January 01, 2020 @08:36AM (#21927935)

I'm not an expert, so I may be mistaken. However, my understanding is that, as it applies to motor skills, Moravec's Paradox applies to skills that require either fine sensing (e.g. manipulating something delicate) or adapting to a complex environment (e.g. navigating a room or painting).

It seems to me, that the success of robots in manufacturing demonstrates that this does not apply to many (but not all) unskilled labor jobs.

It also seems to me that in many cases it may be possible to modify the job to fit the capabilities of a robot rather than the other way around. For example, rather than build a robot that can clean an arbitrary toilet I could either standardize the internal dimensions of the toilet bowl or give the robot a pipe-style brush that it big enough to clean any bowl.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI by goatinaboat on Wednesday January 01, 2020 @09:15AM (#21928087)

For example, rather than build a robot that can clean an arbitrary toilet I could either standardize the internal dimensions of the toilet bowl

Sure, this is an argument often made by self-driving car enthusiasts, let’s just remake all the roads, ban all pedestrians and non-self-driving vehicles and so on. But it’s another instance of the same paradox, instead of radically underestimating the computation involved in actions that nature has given us dedicated hardware for, underestimating the vast cost of doing so.

In this case not only would you need to standardise the toilet bowl, but the route through the house to get to the bathroom and what to do about any unexpected obstacles...

The paradox in general applies to everything that humans take for granted that we can do without fully appreciating that it took us a billion years of evolution to get here.

[ Parent | on HN ]