Of course in the 1950s many thought that computer vision and artificial intelligence were only a few months to years away, and here we are 70 years later and we

Of course in the 1950s many thought that computer vision and artificial intelligence were only a few months to years away, and here we are 70 years later and we're still working on those problems. Predicting the future is hard. Some problems are harder than expected, others are easier than expected. But generally I'd say history favors the pessimists, the cases where a problem gets solved suddenly and there's a major breakthrough get a lot of press and attention, but they're a minority in the overall story of technological progress. They're also unpredictable black swan events - someone might crack AGI or a unified theory of physics tomorrow, or it might not happen for ten thousand years, or ever.