This is a really interesting problem to work on. A couple obvious points:
1. This is a task that humans must do all the time. It's very important in all kinds of different circumstances.
2. This is also a task that humans find very difficult. It's not like recognizing someone by their face, where humans do it effortlessly but struggle to describe how. We frequently fail at this.
Combining (1) and (2), and the assumption that this task has been just as important historically as it still is now, we might conclude that this is a really hard problem and AI is unlikely to reach the level of performance we might hope for.
And if AI quickly jumps to superhuman levels of performance, that too would have many interesting implications.
1. This is a task that humans must do all the time. It's very important in all kinds of different circumstances.
2. This is also a task that humans find very difficult. It's not like recognizing someone by their face, where humans do it effortlessly but struggle to describe how. We frequently fail at this.
Combining (1) and (2), and the assumption that this task has been just as important historically as it still is now, we might conclude that this is a really hard problem and AI is unlikely to reach the level of performance we might hope for.
And if AI quickly jumps to superhuman levels of performance, that too would have many interesting implications.