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Ray Kurzweil: How My Predictions Are Faring (2010)

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Re: Ray Kurzweil: How My Predictions Are Faring (2010)

#21

> 4. Communication | Telephone communication has moving images > PREDICTION: ...and routinely includes high-resolution moving images. > ACCURACY: Correct ...and then he goes on to mention FaceTime and mobile video calls in the US in 2010, and calls it a success. Meanwhile, in Europe, we've had this since 2003, all phones you buy now have the capability, but almost no-one is using it, because it is essentially an unde…

We regurlarly do Skype video calls with the grand parents of our daughter. Video telephony has been completely mismarketed and wrongly priced. It's a technology with high emotional bandwidth. This means we want to use it for longer and more intimate calls. It should therefore be priced as low as possible. When it was first launched in Europe it was marketed as a premium version of voice calls and thus much more expensive. This was wrong. Compare this with SMS which has a very low emotional bandwidth. This type of communication is much more rapid and we accept a higher price per byte.

Re: Ray Kurzweil: How My Predictions Are Faring (2010)

#22
post #20

> 4. Communication | Telephone communication has moving images > PREDICTION: ...and routinely includes high-resolution moving images. > ACCURACY: Correct ...and then he goes on to mention FaceTime and mobile video calls in the US in 2010, and calls it a success. Meanwhile, in Europe, we've had this since 2003, all phones you buy now have the capability, but almost no-one is using it, because it is essentially an unde…

Saying it has been widely available in Europe sine 2003 is a bit of hyperbole. Far from every phone had the ability and the UI always sucked. You could but it was damn hard.

In my defense, I was just keeping with the spirit of the article. If Ray can be excessively optimistic to support his claims, so can I. :-)

Re: Ray Kurzweil: How My Predictions Are Faring (2010)

#23
post #7
post #2

First, my compliments to any prophet who goes back to actually audit his predictions. Having said that, I think Ray is grading himself on a pretty generous curve. Many predictions of the form "X will be Y" are counted as correct if somewhere in the world at some cost there is technology available allowing X to be Y. As a neutral reader, those predictions sure sound like they are supposedly to be widespread rather tha…

That may be, but I don't know of anyone else making these kind of predictions with Ray's accuracy.

That's true. Of course he won't be spot on 100% of the time for 10 year predictions, but he's certainly better at it than anyone else.

Re: Ray Kurzweil: How My Predictions Are Faring (2010)

#24

> 4. Communication | Telephone communication has moving images > PREDICTION: ...and routinely includes high-resolution moving images. > ACCURACY: Correct ...and then he goes on to mention FaceTime and mobile video calls in the US in 2010, and calls it a success. Meanwhile, in Europe, we've had this since 2003, all phones you buy now have the capability, but almost no-one is using it, because it is essentially an unde…

Now that I've read through all of his predictions, this is part of a larger trend among them. He calls his predictions a success when the technology problem has been solved, and he is completely ignoring that forces that decide if that technology becomes common or not. He is very bad at thinking about the human factors, and optimistically calls success for things that saw a brief life in the market, and then was pushed to the sidelines.

Take force-feedback in games. Ten years ago I could go into any videogame store and buy a lot more different kinds of force-feedback controllers than I can today. It was tried, and then everyone got bored.

Or his prediction that everyone will have several wearable computer devices on them. Yes, we can do that today, but noone is doing it, because the more devices you have, the more often you have to recharge them. This is why most people consolidate their wearables to one smartphone that they charge every night, rather than ten devices that have to be charged each on their individual schedule.

Or voice-recognition input. Yes, the technology is there, but is is not, and will probably never be, the main input mode for our computers, because it is incredibly annoying in any group of people.

Or his prediction that cables are disappearing. This prediction will not fully come true until we solve the recharging problem. I have a colleague who recently bought an ordinary wired mouse to replace his cordless mouse, and he said it's the best thing he bought for his computer in ten years, because it always works and never runs out of power.

Or his prediction about animated virtual personalities. Yes, I've seen those at a bunch of websites, but less and less these days as people realize that they're just in the way. What people want is an efficient search function where they can type whatever they want and get relevant results.

He also has a bunch of predictions involving virtual reality which are all pretty off. World of Warcraft has over ten million active players, and allows people to interact with each other in the virtual world of Azeroth, and yet a lot of people play it in internet cafés or at LAN parties, they play it with their friends next to them, because the physical experience is so much better than the virtual one.

It's also pretty telling that if you look at professional video game players, they are constantly rejecting reality-like immersion. The best first-person-shooter players are all using the lowest graphical settings, and a distorted perspective, the best world of warcraft players do the same, play with no sound, and have lots of addons that expose as much of the underlying mechanics and numbers as possible, which is completely contrary to the goal of immersive systems.

Re: Ray Kurzweil: How My Predictions Are Faring (2010)

#26
post #16
post #2

First, my compliments to any prophet who goes back to actually audit his predictions. Having said that, I think Ray is grading himself on a pretty generous curve. Many predictions of the form "X will be Y" are counted as correct if somewhere in the world at some cost there is technology available allowing X to be Y. As a neutral reader, those predictions sure sound like they are supposedly to be widespread rather tha…

If you are an expert in world jugglery you can even make Astrology seem true. The trick is to use that fact that English words aren't clearly defined. That way in the future you can clarify what you meant :) For example, Kurzweil said we would have a 20 petaflops super computer by 2009. Right now the fastest super computer is Tianhe-1 and it is capable of 2.5 petaflops. And to that Kurzweil responded that he consider…

At worst he's only out by about 2 years with that one. That's pretty damn close.

Re: Ray Kurzweil: How My Predictions Are Faring (2010)

#28
Ray is systematically restating his opinions in much more vague manner than his original publication of the Singularity is Near.

Originally:

"By the end of this decade, computers will disappear as distinct physical objects, with displays built in our eyeglasses, and electronics woven in our clothing, providing full-immersion visual virtual reality."

Now (from the PDF):

"Personal computers are available in a wide range of sizes and shapes"..."the prediction does not say that all computers would be small devices integrated in these ways, just that this would be common, which is indeed the case"

Sorry Ray, I'm not convinced.

I believe Ray completely ignores economics in his predictions. Things such as Moore's law appear when there is always constant, high economic demand. There is always constant, high economic demand for faster computers due to the intrinsic nature of how computers are used. There is NOT constant, high demand for new consumer technologies that haven't been developed and extensively marketed yet.

A corrollary is tablet computers. Development and research into touch interfaces did not increase exponentially after it was developed. Rather, you had to wait 9 years for an Apple to come along to do the hardwork of changing consumer preference to create the economic demand for this improved human-computer interface.

Ray usually seems to assume that an AI is in charge of the economic demand leading to its creation before it is created. He ignores the "stickiness" inherent in consumer demand. Perhaps there is a place for the post-service economy techno-marxist cyber utopia he envisions, but I don't see it occurring before capitalism has run its course globally, which will still take some time.

Re: Ray Kurzweil: How My Predictions Are Faring (2010)

#29

For those who aren't familiar with Kurzweil's thesis and don't want to read his books, this video of a presentation he gave at MIT is a good introduction: http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/327 Running time: ±36 mins

The summary he gives at the beginning of this paper is actually pretty good, too, if you want a really condensed version:

My core thesis, which I call the ―law of accelerating returns,‖ is that fundamental measures of information technology follow predictable and exponential trajectories, belying the conventional wisdom that ―you can‘t predict the future.‖ There are still many things — which project, company or technical standard will prevail in the marketplace, or when peace will come to the Middle East — that remain unpredictable, but the underlying price/performance and capacity of information is nonetheless remarkably predictable. Surprisingly, these trends are unperturbed by conditions such as war or peace and prosperity or recession.

Re: Ray Kurzweil: How My Predictions Are Faring (2010)

#30

Interesting - The paper is dated "October, 2010", but on page 10, he talks about the "$4.99 Word Lens iPhone App". Just how clairvoyant is Ray Kurzwell anyways... :-)

It looks like the paper was (and maybe still is) under constant revision, which isn't reflected in the publishing date. For example, on page 7 he mentions TSV 3D DDR3 memory by Samsung, which was announced on December,7 2010 (http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/newsVie... ), and it says December in the paper.

Though I'm really happy to discover that Kurzweil is keeping in touch with the latest developments in technology, I'm alarmed by the fact that he seems to be eager to cut corners to put his agenda. This particular memory is just announced in December, and it should be available in 2012, not now. Kurzweil is supposed to be talking about the situation in 2010, isn't he? And, while defending himself, he says that he means "commonly used", not "ubiquitous". Maybe it's because English isn't native language to me, but I thought it is more or less the same.

I'm worried by Kurzweil's ethics.

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