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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 5048691" data-attributes="member: 177">With respect, I believe if those men as they were in the 1950s and 1960s were to see what we have now, they would not claim this is what they were thinking of.Yes, but AI in Turing's sense also doesn't exist.&nbsp; It turns out that we don't know enough about human cognition to make computers do it, such that it is among the things that are &quot;20 years away&quot; now for maybe 40 years.&nbsp; Perhaps not the best example of predicting the next big innovation, hm?Here's the thing - hindsight is 20/20.&nbsp; For any particular development, after the fact you are probably able to find that someone, somewhere, predicted it would happen.&nbsp; There are hundreds of millions of people around to make guesses, so by simple odds a few of them will get it right.&nbsp; That's prediction by shotgun method in hindsight - not really useful.For a thing to be predictable, we need to reliably say beforehand what will happen.&nbsp; You can say that Star Trek predicted cell phones, but then it also predicted transporters and FTL travel!&nbsp; We can't figure out what will be the next Cabbage Patch Kid, much less what new technology will really take off.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 5048691, member: 177"] With respect, I believe if those men as they were in the 1950s and 1960s were to see what we have now, they would not claim this is what they were thinking of. Yes, but AI in Turing's sense also doesn't exist. It turns out that we don't know enough about human cognition to make computers do it, such that it is among the things that are "20 years away" now for maybe 40 years. Perhaps not the best example of predicting the next big innovation, hm? Here's the thing - hindsight is 20/20. For any particular development, after the fact you are probably able to find that someone, somewhere, predicted it would happen. There are hundreds of millions of people around to make guesses, so by simple odds a few of them will get it right. That's prediction by shotgun method in hindsight - not really useful. For a thing to be predictable, we need to [i]reliably[/i] say beforehand what will happen. You can say that Star Trek predicted cell phones, but then it also predicted transporters and FTL travel! We can't figure out what will be the next Cabbage Patch Kid, much less what new technology will really take off. [/QUOTE]

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