[0x006A]

Its worth looking at the alt text of the xkcd itself: In the 60s, Marvin Minsky assigned a couple of undergrads to spend the summer programming a computer to use a camera to identify objects in a scene. He figured they'd have the problem solved by the end of the summer. Half a century later, we're still working on it.

[bonoboTP]

It's a cute anecdote but of course reality is more boring. The assignment wasn't to solve human level vision in a summer, just to do quite constrained object recognition. But even that turned out to be quite hard. But Minksy wasn't that fully miscalibrated.

[acdha]

I think it’s worth reading the original assignment:

https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/6125/AIM-100....

If you want to argue that “likely objects” is weaker than Munroe intended, I think that’s a valid position but also that we’re certainly overthinking it.