In the year 1990 no robotics was available. The only thing what was visible during this decade were classical computing machinery which includes home computers, supercomputers and even the Internet. Until 1990 it was unclear how to program Artificial Intelligence.
On the other hand, from 2010 AI was evolving quickly and many robots were developed and existing models were improved. So the natural question is: what exactly happened in the meantime which enabled AI and robotics?
The surprising situation is, that from a computer science perspective no measurable progress was made since 1990. Even if the amount of RAM in a typical workstation has improved, and even hard drives had become larger, there was no invention available like an AI chip or a revolutionary robot algorithms. Some attempts were made to create dedicated AI programming languages, and even parallel microprocessors were created for running neural networks – but all these innovations didn't resulted in artificial intelligence.
What was created instead is located outside of computer science and it was the discovery of AI related puzzles. Perhaps it makes sense to explain this idea in detail. A puzzle in the classical sense is a thinking game, for example the rubics cube is a 3d cube with random color surfaces, while, while a sliding puzzle like 15 puzzle contains of numbers on cells which can be moved in 2d space. There are word puzzles which are called crossword puzzles and jigsaw picture puzzles.
An AI related puzzle is a certain puzzle which was invented to investigate the subject of robotics and intelligent machines. These AI related puzzles were invented from 1990 to 2010 in a high amount of diversity. There are AI Related puzzles in a physical world which is about mechanical robots and also in a virtual environment which can be realized as video games. The creation of a certain AI related puzzle describes the reality from a different standpoint. This standpoint allows to define what AI is about.
Entry level AI puzzles are the mentioned 15 puzzle problem, chess based puzzles and the traveling salesman problem. None of these puzzles has to do with computer science in the classical sense which includes computer hardware, software or algorithms, but its invented outside of computer science. Computers are only used to solve these problems.
More advanced AI related puzzles are OCR datasets used for neural network training, the visual question answering challenge, and robotics competitions like micromouse and robocup. What all these puzzles have in common is, that they fit on a single sheet of paper. The document constains the instruction what the puzzle is about. For example it consists of a map for a robot navigation task or explains what the rules of the robocup competition are. These instructions can be convertted into a computer science project which includes building of mechanical hardware and programming the robot software. So we can say, that AI puzzĺes are a meta technology which allows to create new AI related technology.
Let me give an example: A single puzzle description for the micromouse robot competition can be used as a starting point for a dozens of concrete projects. Some of the robots are realized with the Arduino microcontroller, while other are using Lego Mindstorms technology. Some of the projects might be programmed in Assembly language or with neural networks or with the C/C++ language. These detail decisions are taken place within classical computer science but they are not important for the AI problem directly. The only thing which counts is the AI puzzle itself.
The advancement in AI from 1990 to 2010 can be entirely explained with the invention of better AI puzzles. Early problems like tictacto or chess puzzles are resulting only in low quality AI projects, while later puzzles like “Mario AI”, deep learning datasets and instruction following problems in robotics are generating more advanced AI innovation. So we can say, that the main question in AI is “What sort of puzzle has to be solved?”
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