When it comes to android function, technological progress faces a challenge my friend Hans Moravec identified several decades ago, now called Moravec’s paradox.[84] In short, mental tasks that seem hard to humans—like square-rooting large numbers and remembering large amounts of information—are comparatively easy for computers. Conversely, mental tasks that are effortless to humans—like recognizing a face or keeping one’s balance while walking—are much more difficult for AI. The likely reason is that these latter functions have evolved over tens or hundreds of millions of years and run in the
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