Embodied Natural Intelligence VS Embodied AI

Jacob Bronowski once said, “the hand is the cutting edge of the mind.” Natural systems—including humans, advanced mammals, and birds—excel at treating tools as body extensions, showing the evolutionary advantage of generalized motor skills. They can even operate devices with no evolutionary precedent (e.g., a monkey driving a car), revealing a general-purpose learning machinery for embodied control. Yet in today’s internet-scale data age, robotics remains brittle in comparison. This talk asks what embodied intelligence truly is, and examines why such a large gap persists in capability and reliability between natural and artificial systems in physical interaction.