{"id":"83abc6fce7c0bd20a9f742068b5d4457e96f0003526f5e6820bb57a29461efe0","title":"Arvind Narayanan argues in Normal Tech that Moravec’s paradox misleads AI forecasts","argument":"Published January 29, 2026, Arvind Narayanan argues in Normal Tech that Moravec’s paradox—the idea that tasks difficult for people are easy for AI, and vice versa—has not been empirically tested and cannot predict which AI capabilities will come next. He suggests the pattern may reflect which tasks AI researchers choose to study: tasks that are easy for both people and AI, or hard for both, often attract less attention. He also challenges the evolutionary story used to explain the paradox, arguing that reasoning in open-ended settings depends on common-sense knowledge and other limits shared by people and AI.\n\nNarayanan says the same simplistic model can create alarm about AI replacing human expertise in fields such as science, while offering false comfort about robotics. 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