Hans Moravec

{{Short description|Austrian-Canadian roboticist and futurist (born 1948)}}

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Hans P. Moravec

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| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1948|11|30}}{{Cite web |title=Hans P. Moravec |url=https://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/hpm.cv.html |access-date=2023-06-03 |archive-date=2023-04-19 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230419220906/https://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/hpm.cv.html |url-status=live }}

| birth_place = Kautzen, Austria

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| nationality = Canadian (U.S. Permanent Resident)

| fields = computer science, Robotics, artificial intelligence

| workplaces = Carnegie Mellon University
Stanford University

| alma_mater = BSc: Acadia University
MSc: University of Western Ontario
PhD: Stanford University

| doctoral_advisor = John McCarthy

| thesis_title = Obstacle avoidance and navigation in the real world by a seeing robot rover

| thesis_year = 1980

| thesis_url = https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/848476

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| known_for = Moravec's corner detector
Moravec's paradox
Bush robot
Occupancy grid mapping
Quantum suicide and immortality
Rotating skyhook
Rotovator
Stanford Cart

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Hans Peter Moravec (born November 30, 1948, Kautzen, Austria) is a computer scientist and an adjunct faculty member at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA. He is known for his work on robotics, artificial intelligence, and writings on the impact of technology. Moravec also is a futurist with many of his publications and predictions focusing on transhumanism. Moravec developed techniques in computer vision for determining the region of interest (ROI) in a scene.

Career

Moravec attended Loyola College in Montreal for two years and transferred to Acadia University, where he received his BSc in mathematics in 1969. He received his MSc in computer science in 1971 from the University of Western Ontario. He then earned a PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 1980 for a TV-equipped robot which was remotely controlled by a large computer (the Stanford Cart{{Cite web |last=Moravec |first=Hans P. |date=24 February 1983 |title=The Stanford Cart and The CMU Rover |url=https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA133207.pdf}}). The robot was able to negotiate cluttered obstacle courses. Another achievement in robotics was the discovery of new approaches for robot spatial representation such as 3D occupancy grids. He also developed the idea of bush robots.

Moravec joined the newly established Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon in 1980 as a research scientist, becoming research professor in 1995. He has been an adjunct professor at the institute since 2005.

Moravec was a cofounder of Seegrid Corporation{{Cite web |url=https://www.seegrid.com/ |title=Seegrid Corporation website |access-date=2020-10-06 |archive-date=2020-11-05 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201105050035/https://seegrid.com/ |url-status=live }} of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,{{cite web |url=http://www.promatshow.com/press/release.aspx?id=3804 |title=FAST COMPANY Announces Seegrid as One of the 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2013 |access-date=2013-04-19 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130630051430/http://www.promatshow.com/press/release.aspx?id=3804 |archive-date=2013-06-30 }} in 2003, which is a robotics company with one of its goals being to develop a fully autonomous robot capable of navigating its environment without human intervention.

He is also somewhat known for his work on space tethers.{{Cite web |url=http://www.tethers.com/MXTethers3.html |title=Momentum-Exchange Tethers |access-date=2007-07-22 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181122051715/http://www.tethers.com/MXTethers3.html |archive-date=2018-11-22 |url-status=dead }}

Futurism

= Predictions =

Hans Moravec has made some concrete predictions as to the future of intelligence, by estimating the computational cost (measured in instructions per second) of various operations of human intelligence, and comparing it with the future of computer computational power as predicted by Moore's law.

In When will computer hardware match the human brain (1998),{{cite journal |last=Moravec |first=Hans |date=1998 |title=When will computer hardware match the human brain |url=https://jetpress.org/volume1/moravec.htm |journal=Journal of Evolution and Technology |volume=1 |issue=1}} he estimated that human brains operate at about $10^{15}$ instructions per second, and that, if Moore's law continues, a computer with the same speed would cost only 1000 USD (1997 dollars) in mid-2020s, thus "computers suitable for humanlike robots will appear in the 2020s".

=''Mind Children''=

In his 1988 book Mind Children,{{cite book | first = Hans | last = Moravec | date = 1988 | title = Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence | publisher = Harvard University Press | pages = | isbn = 978-0-674-57618-6 | oclc = 1154983637 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=56mb7XuSx3QC}} Moravec outlines Moore's law and predictions about the future of artificial life. Moravec outlines a timeline and a scenario in this regard,{{cite journal| url=http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm| journal=Journal of Evolution and Technology| year=1998| volume=1| title=When will computer hardware match the human brain?| first=Hans| last=Moravec| access-date=2006-06-23| url-status=dead| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060615031852/http://transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm| archive-date=2006-06-15}}{{cite web| url=http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1993/Robot93.html| title=The Age of Robots| date=June 1993| first=Hans| last=Moravec| access-date=2006-06-23| archive-date=2006-06-15| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060615055406/http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1993/Robot93.html| url-status=live}} in that the robots will evolve into a new series of artificial species, starting around 2030–2040.{{cite web| url=http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/robot.papers/2004/Predictions.html| title=Robot Predictions Evolution| first=Hans| last=Moravec| date=April 2004| access-date=2006-06-23| archive-date=2006-06-16| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060616045535/http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/robot.papers/2004/Predictions.html| url-status=live}}

Moravec also outlined the "neural substitution argument" in Mind Children{{r|Moravec1988|p=109-122}}, published 7 years before David Chalmers published a similar argument in his paper "[http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia]", which is sometimes cited as the source of the idea. The neural substitution argument is that if each neuron in a conscious brain can be replaced successively by an electronic substitute with the same behavior as the neuron it replaces, then a biological consciousness would be transferred seamlessly into an electronic computer, thus proving that consciousness does not depend on biology and can be treated as an abstract computable process.

=''Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind''=

In Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, published in 1999, Moravec further considers the implications of evolving robot intelligence, generalizing Moore's law to technologies predating the integrated circuit, and extrapolating it to predict a coming "mind fire" of rapidly expanding superintelligence.

Arthur C. Clarke wrote about this book: "Robot is the most awesome work of controlled imagination I have ever encountered: Hans Moravec stretched my mind until it hit the stops."{{ISBN|0-19-511630-5}}: Cover praise for Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, 1999 David Brin also praised the book: "Moravec blends hard scientific practicality with a prophet's far-seeing vision."{{ISBN|0-19-511630-5}}: Cover praise for Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, by Dr David Brin, 1999 On the other hand, the book was reviewed less favorably by Colin McGinn for The New York Times. McGinn wrote, "Moravec ... writes bizarre, confused, incomprehensible things about consciousness as an abstraction, like number, and as a mere "interpretation" of brain activity. He also loses his grip on the distinction between virtual and real reality as his speculations spiral majestically into incoherence."{{Cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/01/03/reviews/990103.03mcginnt.html |title=Hello, HAL |first=Colin |last=McGinn |work=The New York Times |date=January 3, 1999 |access-date=March 2, 2017 |archive-date=August 28, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170828033814/http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/01/03/reviews/990103.03mcginnt.html |url-status=live }}

Publications

{{cite book |last=Moravec |first=Hans |title=Mind Children |date=1988 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-57618-6 |publication-place=Cambridge}}
{{cite journal |last=Moravec |first=Hans P. |date=June 15, 1988 |title=Sensor Fusion in Certainty Grids for Mobile Robots |url=https://ojs.aaai.org/aimagazine/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/676 |journal=AI Magazine |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=61 |doi=10.1609/aimag.v9i2.676 |issn=2371-9621 |access-date=September 25, 2024}}

{{cite book |last=Moravec |first=Hans P. |title=Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind |date=1999 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-513630-6 |publication-place=Oxford New York Paris}}

{{cite journal |last=Moravec |first=Hans |year=1999 |title=Rise of the Robots |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/26058531 |journal=Scientific American |publisher=Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc. |volume=281 |issue=6 |pages=124–135 |doi=10.1038/scientificamerican1299-124 |issn=0036-8733 |jstor=26058531 |bibcode=1999SciAm.281f.124M |access-date=September 25, 2024|url-access=subscription }}

{{cite journal |last=Moravec |first=Hans |date=1998 |title=When will computer hardware match the human brain |journal=Journal of Evolution and Technology |volume=1 |issue=1 |url=https://jetpress.org/volume1/moravec.htm }}

References

External links

{{Cite web |url=http://www.primitivism.com/superhumanism.htm |title=Superhumanism--Interview with Hans Moravec by Charles Platt |access-date=2016-11-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190217004738/http://www.primitivism.com/superhumanism.htm |archive-date=2019-02-17 |url-status=dead }} (Interview with Moravec on technical progress and artificial intelligence)
[http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/ Hans Moravec's official website at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Center]
[http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/hpm.cv.html Hans Moravec's official biography page]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20090410033301/http://www.ri.cmu.edu/person.html?person_id=410 Hans Moravec's webpage at the Robotics Institute]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20080511161337/http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/users/hpm/project.archive/robot.papers/1999/NASA.report.99/9901.NASA.summary.html Moravec Bush Robot Final Report]
[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/robots/moravec.html NOVA online interview with Moravec in October, 1997.]
{{Cite web |url= http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rise-of-the-robots |title=Rise of the Robots--The Future of Artificial Intelligence |first=Hans |last=Moravec |work=Scientific American |date=March 23, 2009 }}
Wikiversity:Mind Children