7 ms·

My Dated Predictions

48 points by isp 9y ago

isp 9y ago
Predictions start here: http://rodneybrooks.com/my-dated-predictions/#tablepress-1 http://rodneybrooks.com/my-dated-predictions/#tablepress-1 Abbreviations are: * NIML meaning "Not In My Lifetime", i.e., not until after January 1st, 2050 * NET some date, meaning "No Earlier Than" that date. * BY some date, meaning "By" that date.
- kurthr 9y ago
  Yann Lecun has a nice comment on Deep Learning vs Supervised learning being the Heat Engine vs Steam Engine example, although they both seem to agree on hype. I wonder if the 'Spam in a can' problem for underground transport can be resolved with VR or simply human absorption into BYOD.
  - dbcurtis 9y ago
    I'm not so sure. A significant portion of the population will find the "Spam in a can" problem a claustrophobia trigger. There are people that would just never get into one. Like my wife -- who lasted about 5 minutes into a tour of a WW II submarine that was sitting on the surface with the hatches open. Which means we would never travel as a family in Spam can. Of course there are ways of dealing with that. It will require thoughtful industrial design and human factors design, and certain minimum volume. A VR headset will itself become a claustrophobia trigger enhancer in a triggering environment. The human factors problem should not be trivialized.
jasonmaydie 9y ago
What is the value to predicting things other than stroking ones own ego?
- grzm 9y ago
  Accurate speculation, which prediction is, is a skill that can be practiced and improved. This has benefits as it makes one better at estimating outcomes. Posting it online also helps keep people accountable. Yeah, there might be some promotion going on as well, but that can be true for anything one posts on line. If you find someone's post valuable, great. If not, that's fine, too.
  - osteele 9y ago
    Scott Alexander calibrates his predictions http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/02/2017-predictions-calibration-results/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/02/2017-predictions-calibr...
  - klenwell 9y ago
    I agree here and would underscore this point: in the hands of public experts, media talking heads, and many types of charlatan, predictions can be immensely powerful and have tremendous influence over public policy and social behavior. So I consider assessing them for accuracy and holding prediction-makers accountable a public good. For a compelling book-length treatment of this question, see Philip Tetlock's Superforecasting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superforecasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superforecasting This project was spun off from the book and is my favorite online forecasting site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Judgment_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Judgment_Project
- spenczar5 9y ago
  What is the value to comments like these other than stroking one's own ego?
  - devmunchies 9y ago
    It seemed to have gotten a few good replies that I hadn't thought of, so it appears to have had some value. Your comment, on the other hand, is basically serving as a downvote-as-a-comment.
  - jasonmaydie 9y ago
    I'm not against predicting things, there's great value in them but usually there is some science behind those predictions. For example people who manufacture things usually offer a warranty period because they have a fairly accurate prediction model how long it will last before it breaks. There is value in coming up with a mathematical model to predict the chances of a person paying back a loan used to buy a house. Insurance companies run prediction models for all kinds of human behavior based on statistics. But what is the value in random pointless predictions about when flying cars will be at thing? There's no math behind it other than intuition.
- ThomPete 9y ago
  A friend of mine has a client who creates patents for future technologies 5-10 years down the line. He understands that when this and this scientific breakthrough happens it will be applicable as a or to a technology and then he creates patents for that. He has quite a lot of patents and make good money on it. Not judging just saying.
  - devmunchies 9y ago
    That sounds so slimy but I guess if all the big players are doing it too, then, if you can't beat 'em...
    - ThomPete 9y ago
      It's both ingenious and slimy if you ask me.
- arstin 9y ago
  Stimulate fun discussion? Organize your own thoughts? Teach readers new things in a way that directly ties the information to their current experience? And so many more.
- sigstoat 9y ago
  weather predictions ("forecasts" for the lay person) seem pretty popular. might have something to do with all the lives saved?
tahw 9y ago
I don't understand why so many people are hung up on flying cars. It's a huge increase in the energy it takes to get from point A to point B, and for what reason? What do they hope to gain by wasting so much more fuel?
- Brockenstein 9y ago
  I'm sure fuel consumption isn't a concern, after all it didn't come up in Back to the Future, it just looked cool. And I imagine people like the idea of going as the crow flies, shorter travel times, no traffic congestion and not having to fuss over road construction. And since it's just a flight of fancy they don't have to consider the risks of falling out of the sky, mid air collisions, noise pollution, increased energy consumption, severe weather, running out of fuel, running out of fuel over Lack Michigan or the Atlantic Ocean or the human factor of letting people who can barely handle X and Y also deal with Z. Maybe some people just have general optimism that the imagined benefits outweigh the obvious problems.
  - FiatLuxDave 9y ago
    I'm guessing its been a while since you've seen Back to the Future, since it totally did come up: http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Fusion http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Fusion
- swsieber 9y ago
  Well, a) shifting traffic patterns from 2D to 3D has potential to reduce congestion, and b) straight lines ares shorter. Also, if we do get flying cars, it'll probably be in part because of a drastic reduction in energy use of flying over driving (e.g. reducing the energy gap between flying and driving). I think however, in most regards, making almost all cars self-driving will bring most of the benefits
  - soVeryTired 9y ago
    So would bundling large numbers of people into a single vehicle for the bulk of the journey and finding other ways to tackle the last-mile problem. Just imagine: transportation for the masses!
simonebrunozzi 9y ago
I want to humbly add my 2020 predictions from 2017: https://medium.com/the-naked-founder/2020-predictions-from-2017-617893fffdda https://medium.com/the-naked-founder/2020-predictions-from-2... Happy to hear comments about it.
- ars 9y ago
  The only one of those with even the remotest chance of happening is the Cryptocurrency one. A Robocop by 2020? If you had a Robocop by 2090 I'd be shocked. (A remotely controlled Robocop is not a Robocop, you said helped by AI, and that's the part I'm focusing on.) Just try to talking to one of those assistants like Google Home, and you'll realize just how far away we are from AI. > [Driverless cars] Today, in 2017, I believe that at least 19 out of 20 people would agree. Nope, not happening. Driverless cars (except in dedicated lanes) are not going to happen for 20 or 30 years if not longer. What I do agree will happen is dedicated instrumented lanes for them on freeways (little point in doing it in cities). Kind of like train rails. But your vision of them transforming cities is not going to happen for decades, if ever.
  - dpcx 9y ago
    Personally, I think many of your time estimates are wildly pessimistic. Humanity is on an improvement graph that almost seems exponential - I don't think it would be crazy to see driverless cars in the next 5-10 years, considering how many people continue to get in to this space. There may be strict legislation around it, but that's a different discussion. Similarly, look how far we've come in "assistants" in the last 6 years since Siri was released... 2090 definitely seems like a stretch.
    - workthrowaway27 9y ago
      We've been able to do driverless cars since the 90s. It's doing it safely while mixed in with normal cars that's the problem. I'm with the other poster that we won't see driverless cars in non-dedicated lanes for at least 20 years. Edit: actually the article mentions a self driving car from 1987, so even earlier.
Isamu 9y ago
Since he brings up a number of Elon Musk initiatives, it seems to relate in part to the public conversation that Elon has been having about AI. For those who don't know Rodney Brooks, he was faculty at MIT for years, co-founded iRobot and Rethink Robotics, where he is working on collaborative robotics (robots that can work with humans without maiming them.)
- ChuckMcM 9y ago
  It kind of gives you a sense of the sort of messaging that Dr. Brooks doesn't have a lot of respect for. I have big fan of Brooks' work from his MIT days on, it is very practical robotics which has done things that others haven't (Ghengis, the walking robot, really was a revolution in terms of mobility[1]). But hype cycle or not, it would have been interesting to see where he had placed reusable rocketry in 2007. Would it have been 'by 2020 it will be common' or would it have been 'won't happen, the existing rockets work quite well and there isn't enough gain to justify the additional work.' While Brooks picks on Elon a lot, the core of his essay is what makes it 'easy' to predict something will happen versus what makes it 'hard'. And I think he doesn't give enough credit to the fact that even if something is possible it needs a catalyst to get it to precipitate out of the realm of possibility into the realm of reality. I think Dr. Brooks has a blind spot on space challenges, but I enjoyed his AI predictions. Of course it is entirely possible I just want easy access to space more than he does :-) [1] I'm guessing @animats will disagree with that assessment :-) But he and Dr. Brooks approached the problem of inverse kinematics very differently and both got good results.
  - Isamu 9y ago
    > he and Dr. Brooks approached the problem of inverse kinematics very differently Could you expand on this? Thanks. I like this essay, it seems to condense a lot of his thinking over some time.

48 points by isp 9y ago

isp 9y ago

Predictions start here: http://rodneybrooks.com/my-dated-predictions/#tablepress-1 http://rodneybrooks.com/my-dated-predictions/#tablepress-1 Abbreviations are: * NIML meaning "Not In My Lifetime", i.e., not until after January 1st, 2050 * NET some date, meaning "No Earlier Than" that date. * BY some date, meaning "By" that date.

kurthr 9y ago
Yann Lecun has a nice comment on Deep Learning vs Supervised learning being the Heat Engine vs Steam Engine example, although they both seem to agree on hype. I wonder if the 'Spam in a can' problem for underground transport can be resolved with VR or simply human absorption into BYOD.
- dbcurtis 9y ago
  I'm not so sure. A significant portion of the population will find the "Spam in a can" problem a claustrophobia trigger. There are people that would just never get into one. Like my wife -- who lasted about 5 minutes into a tour of a WW II submarine that was sitting on the surface with the hatches open. Which means we would never travel as a family in Spam can. Of course there are ways of dealing with that. It will require thoughtful industrial design and human factors design, and certain minimum volume. A VR headset will itself become a claustrophobia trigger enhancer in a triggering environment. The human factors problem should not be trivialized.

jasonmaydie 9y ago

What is the value to predicting things other than stroking ones own ego?

grzm 9y ago
Accurate speculation, which prediction is, is a skill that can be practiced and improved. This has benefits as it makes one better at estimating outcomes. Posting it online also helps keep people accountable. Yeah, there might be some promotion going on as well, but that can be true for anything one posts on line. If you find someone's post valuable, great. If not, that's fine, too.
- osteele 9y ago
  Scott Alexander calibrates his predictions http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/02/2017-predictions-calibration-results/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/02/2017-predictions-calibr...
- klenwell 9y ago
  I agree here and would underscore this point: in the hands of public experts, media talking heads, and many types of charlatan, predictions can be immensely powerful and have tremendous influence over public policy and social behavior. So I consider assessing them for accuracy and holding prediction-makers accountable a public good. For a compelling book-length treatment of this question, see Philip Tetlock's Superforecasting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superforecasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superforecasting This project was spun off from the book and is my favorite online forecasting site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Judgment_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Judgment_Project
spenczar5 9y ago
What is the value to comments like these other than stroking one's own ego?
- devmunchies 9y ago
  It seemed to have gotten a few good replies that I hadn't thought of, so it appears to have had some value. Your comment, on the other hand, is basically serving as a downvote-as-a-comment.
- jasonmaydie 9y ago
  I'm not against predicting things, there's great value in them but usually there is some science behind those predictions. For example people who manufacture things usually offer a warranty period because they have a fairly accurate prediction model how long it will last before it breaks. There is value in coming up with a mathematical model to predict the chances of a person paying back a loan used to buy a house. Insurance companies run prediction models for all kinds of human behavior based on statistics. But what is the value in random pointless predictions about when flying cars will be at thing? There's no math behind it other than intuition.
ThomPete 9y ago
A friend of mine has a client who creates patents for future technologies 5-10 years down the line. He understands that when this and this scientific breakthrough happens it will be applicable as a or to a technology and then he creates patents for that. He has quite a lot of patents and make good money on it. Not judging just saying.
- devmunchies 9y ago
  That sounds so slimy but I guess if all the big players are doing it too, then, if you can't beat 'em...
  - ThomPete 9y ago
    It's both ingenious and slimy if you ask me.
arstin 9y ago
Stimulate fun discussion? Organize your own thoughts? Teach readers new things in a way that directly ties the information to their current experience? And so many more.
sigstoat 9y ago
weather predictions ("forecasts" for the lay person) seem pretty popular. might have something to do with all the lives saved?

tahw 9y ago

I don't understand why so many people are hung up on flying cars. It's a huge increase in the energy it takes to get from point A to point B, and for what reason? What do they hope to gain by wasting so much more fuel?

Brockenstein 9y ago
I'm sure fuel consumption isn't a concern, after all it didn't come up in Back to the Future, it just looked cool. And I imagine people like the idea of going as the crow flies, shorter travel times, no traffic congestion and not having to fuss over road construction. And since it's just a flight of fancy they don't have to consider the risks of falling out of the sky, mid air collisions, noise pollution, increased energy consumption, severe weather, running out of fuel, running out of fuel over Lack Michigan or the Atlantic Ocean or the human factor of letting people who can barely handle X and Y also deal with Z. Maybe some people just have general optimism that the imagined benefits outweigh the obvious problems.
- FiatLuxDave 9y ago
  I'm guessing its been a while since you've seen Back to the Future, since it totally did come up: http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Fusion http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Fusion
swsieber 9y ago
Well, a) shifting traffic patterns from 2D to 3D has potential to reduce congestion, and b) straight lines ares shorter. Also, if we do get flying cars, it'll probably be in part because of a drastic reduction in energy use of flying over driving (e.g. reducing the energy gap between flying and driving). I think however, in most regards, making almost all cars self-driving will bring most of the benefits
- soVeryTired 9y ago
  So would bundling large numbers of people into a single vehicle for the bulk of the journey and finding other ways to tackle the last-mile problem. Just imagine: transportation for the masses!

simonebrunozzi 9y ago

I want to humbly add my 2020 predictions from 2017: https://medium.com/the-naked-founder/2020-predictions-from-2017-617893fffdda https://medium.com/the-naked-founder/2020-predictions-from-2... Happy to hear comments about it.

ars 9y ago
The only one of those with even the remotest chance of happening is the Cryptocurrency one. A Robocop by 2020? If you had a Robocop by 2090 I'd be shocked. (A remotely controlled Robocop is not a Robocop, you said helped by AI, and that's the part I'm focusing on.) Just try to talking to one of those assistants like Google Home, and you'll realize just how far away we are from AI. > [Driverless cars] Today, in 2017, I believe that at least 19 out of 20 people would agree. Nope, not happening. Driverless cars (except in dedicated lanes) are not going to happen for 20 or 30 years if not longer. What I do agree will happen is dedicated instrumented lanes for them on freeways (little point in doing it in cities). Kind of like train rails. But your vision of them transforming cities is not going to happen for decades, if ever.
- dpcx 9y ago
  Personally, I think many of your time estimates are wildly pessimistic. Humanity is on an improvement graph that almost seems exponential - I don't think it would be crazy to see driverless cars in the next 5-10 years, considering how many people continue to get in to this space. There may be strict legislation around it, but that's a different discussion. Similarly, look how far we've come in "assistants" in the last 6 years since Siri was released... 2090 definitely seems like a stretch.
  - workthrowaway27 9y ago
    We've been able to do driverless cars since the 90s. It's doing it safely while mixed in with normal cars that's the problem. I'm with the other poster that we won't see driverless cars in non-dedicated lanes for at least 20 years. Edit: actually the article mentions a self driving car from 1987, so even earlier.

Isamu 9y ago

Since he brings up a number of Elon Musk initiatives, it seems to relate in part to the public conversation that Elon has been having about AI. For those who don't know Rodney Brooks, he was faculty at MIT for years, co-founded iRobot and Rethink Robotics, where he is working on collaborative robotics (robots that can work with humans without maiming them.)

ChuckMcM 9y ago
It kind of gives you a sense of the sort of messaging that Dr. Brooks doesn't have a lot of respect for. I have big fan of Brooks' work from his MIT days on, it is very practical robotics which has done things that others haven't (Ghengis, the walking robot, really was a revolution in terms of mobility[1]). But hype cycle or not, it would have been interesting to see where he had placed reusable rocketry in 2007. Would it have been 'by 2020 it will be common' or would it have been 'won't happen, the existing rockets work quite well and there isn't enough gain to justify the additional work.' While Brooks picks on Elon a lot, the core of his essay is what makes it 'easy' to predict something will happen versus what makes it 'hard'. And I think he doesn't give enough credit to the fact that even if something is possible it needs a catalyst to get it to precipitate out of the realm of possibility into the realm of reality. I think Dr. Brooks has a blind spot on space challenges, but I enjoyed his AI predictions. Of course it is entirely possible I just want easy access to space more than he does :-) [1] I'm guessing @animats will disagree with that assessment :-) But he and Dr. Brooks approached the problem of inverse kinematics very differently and both got good results.
- Isamu 9y ago
  > he and Dr. Brooks approached the problem of inverse kinematics very differently Could you expand on this? Thanks. I like this essay, it seems to condense a lot of his thinking over some time.