53 points surprisetalk 3 hours ago 9 comments
AndrewKemendo 1 hour ago | parent
The most striking thing is that almost all of his missed predictions were missed not because the technology was not available, but because society rejected or didn’t adopt that technology
_doctor_love 1 hour ago | parent
I would argue that society would likely have been glad to adopt, but the profit-seeking motive got in the way (again).
AndrewKemendo 1 hour ago | parent
I was focused on augmented reality largely in part because it was such a big enabler of all other AI technologies
However people have almost uniformly rejected AR glasses my entire career for social reasons and that is only increasing
To the point where in 2016 I was debating with Jessica Alba and she was firm that they won’t take off cause most people don’t want to wear glasses
NDlurker 34 minutes ago | parent
socializer 7 minutes ago | parent
OK, so imagine that in 1980, I predicted that we'll colonize Mars by the year 2020. Today, I'm arguing that I was right in my prediction - in broad strokes, we have the technology! Nothing is stopping us. It's just that politicians have different priorities.
Of course, that's a load of bull. You can't decouple predictions about the future of mankind from what the mankind actually decides.
I looked up the predictions on Wikipedia and I'd say that most of them are general enough that they're hard to disagree with (there will be bioengineering, there will be robots, there will be AI), but the timing or the specifics are off on almost every single one of them.
stephen_cagle 1 hour ago | parent
With that said, maybe he meant inevitable as N approaches infinity... So there's still time!
Aside: I think the biggest interesting prediction he had was that AI would obey a user driven network effect. It seems like a very clean prediction, and yet it has failed to materialize? I wonder if this has more to do with just how scrape-able the whole internet was or with distilation or what? There is certainly an advantage to having good user data, but it seems like it is largely something that can be worked around (by hook or crook)?
cousinbryce 1 hour ago | parent