4 ms·

Summary of the article is in this paragraph: > This is actually quite impressive! Although 9 out of 25 is only a 36% accuracy rate, I still remember when readi

Summary of the article is in this paragraph: > This is actually quite impressive! Although 9 out of 25 is only a 36% accuracy rate, I still remember when reading The Singularity is Near for the first time that almost all of the predictions seemed wildly optimistic and sort of crazy. It seemed a bit unlikely that it would be possible to have a high speed internet connection from a touchscreen super-computer everyone has in their pocket that can also act as a personal assistant that you can speak to in natural language and it will usually understand and respond appropriately, albeit unable to have a full conversation at this point. So his best record is in making predictions about the internet and ubiquity of portable computers (smartphones), but he's been less successful in his optimistic predictions for full-immersion virtual reality, and the jury is still out on the singularity.

ghransa 6y ago
What he seems to get wrong are the adoption, the tech is there in niches and works reasonably well, but it's just not wide spread, people just don't see the value in using say VR or Google glass.
- dTal 6y ago
  But that's fundamentally the prediction; VR tech has been available in niches since the 90s.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    As William Gibson says, the future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed.
dTal 6y ago
I think that even this article is overly generous, marking predictions as "true" that were equally true when they were made as they are today. For example, "Most colleges will follow MIT's lead, and students will increasingly attend classes virtually" is marked as "true", which reads to me as particularly laughable in light of the enormous disruption to universities that COVID-19 has caused. Yeah, distance learning is a thing; it was a thing in the 70s too.
- hyper_reality 6y ago
  Yes, to take predictions seriously, we should ask the visionary for a rough timescale. And we should also ask not just them but their peers on how likely they think the prediction is to come true. It's not impressive to identify an existing trend and say that it will continue; all of Kurzweil's peers would have been able to see that. Similarly, it's not impressive to keep kicking the can down the road as a prediction eventually becomes truer, but only 50-100 years behind the timeline the visionary implied. Ultimately if the prediction doesn't follow fairly rigorous criteria, it's neither falsifiable nor impressive.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    IMO Kruzweil doesn't make predictions, he makes wish lists. It's useful to consider obvious misses - for example, he failed to predict fake news or the dystopian surveillance and behavioural influencing culture being created by ad tech. This has obvious implications for practical AI. If the black-hat possibilities aren't considered and mitigated, experience to date suggests they'll dominate.
    - wolfgke 6y ago
      > he failed to predict fake news In former days, "fake news" was simply named "propaganda" or "bad/manipulative journalism".
      - rbanffy 6y ago
        Yes, but its ubiquity and political impact was vastly underestimated. We'll pay dearly for that.
        smt88 6y ago
        Considering "fake news" (literally commandeering the media and planting untrue stories) was a tactic used by Hitler and is considered to be a basic tool of authoritarianism, I'd suggest that no one has underestimated its impact. In fact, fake news started WWI.

ghransa 6y ago

What he seems to get wrong are the adoption, the tech is there in niches and works reasonably well, but it's just not wide spread, people just don't see the value in using say VR or Google glass.

dTal 6y ago
But that's fundamentally the prediction; VR tech has been available in niches since the 90s.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  As William Gibson says, the future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed.

dTal 6y ago

I think that even this article is overly generous, marking predictions as "true" that were equally true when they were made as they are today. For example, "Most colleges will follow MIT's lead, and students will increasingly attend classes virtually" is marked as "true", which reads to me as particularly laughable in light of the enormous disruption to universities that COVID-19 has caused. Yeah, distance learning is a thing; it was a thing in the 70s too.

hyper_reality 6y ago
Yes, to take predictions seriously, we should ask the visionary for a rough timescale. And we should also ask not just them but their peers on how likely they think the prediction is to come true. It's not impressive to identify an existing trend and say that it will continue; all of Kurzweil's peers would have been able to see that. Similarly, it's not impressive to keep kicking the can down the road as a prediction eventually becomes truer, but only 50-100 years behind the timeline the visionary implied. Ultimately if the prediction doesn't follow fairly rigorous criteria, it's neither falsifiable nor impressive.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  IMO Kruzweil doesn't make predictions, he makes wish lists. It's useful to consider obvious misses - for example, he failed to predict fake news or the dystopian surveillance and behavioural influencing culture being created by ad tech. This has obvious implications for practical AI. If the black-hat possibilities aren't considered and mitigated, experience to date suggests they'll dominate.
  - wolfgke 6y ago
    > he failed to predict fake news In former days, "fake news" was simply named "propaganda" or "bad/manipulative journalism".
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      Yes, but its ubiquity and political impact was vastly underestimated. We'll pay dearly for that.
      - smt88 6y ago
        Considering "fake news" (literally commandeering the media and planting untrue stories) was a tactic used by Hitler and is considered to be a basic tool of authoritarianism, I'd suggest that no one has underestimated its impact. In fact, fake news started WWI.