I work in machine learning, and I've noticed a particular dynamic in how people treat predictions like this. In general, when there is a breakthrough in a fiel

I work in machine learning, and I've noticed a particular dynamic in how people treat predictions like this. In general, when there is a breakthrough in a field of research—like what deep learning went through recently—there is a gold rush of new projects that push the boundaries. A certain category of people look at these new startups, and project that momentum out to some extremely distant problem (like AGI or fully autonomous vehicles), without understanding if this field of research necessarily leads to solutions to those problems, at least in linear fashion. Then there is another category of person who looks at those predictions and dismisses the entire field as hype, ignoring the surge of valuable projects that kicked it all off.