I think this misses the most important thing about predictions:
* has been "10 years away" for many years: could be tomorrow
An example would be "How long before a computer beats a grandmaster at Go?" The answer was "10 years away" for decades, right up to 2015, and then one day in 2016, that day was "today".
>> The answer was "10 years away" for decades, right up to 2015, and then one day in 2016, that day was "today".
I've heard this a few times. In 2014 I was doing an MSc in Intelligent Systems ("AI" after the Winter) and Go was discussed in class in the context of Russel and Norvig. I don't remember the tutor saying that beating a grandmaster (? do they have grandmasters in Go?) was "10 years away". I remember him saying that Go was the last of the classic board games where humans still dominated machines because it requires intuition.
So, can you say where the "10 years away" quote comes from? Is it an actual quote? Do you know someone who actually said beating [a top human player] in Go is "10 years away" at some time before 2015?
>In early 2014, Coulom's Go-playing program, Crazystone, challenged grandmaster Norimoto Yoda at a tournament in Japan. And it won. But the win came with caveat: the machine had a four-move head start, a significant advantage. At the time, Coulom predicted that it would be another 10 years before machines beat the best players without a head start.
I'm sure there's more to find, but of course google now biases towards the articles about AlphaGo actually winning.
Thanks, I appreciate the reply but the quote from the Wired article does not look like a direct quote from Coulom, so I'm still not sure what it really means. Was it really a "prediction", or more like an offhand remark? What does the person quoted, Coulom, really think about this "prediction" today, and what would they say they meant back then?
More to the point, when you commented above that "The answer was "10 years away" for decades, right up to 2015", did you have the Wired article in mind? I mean to say, did you read that article in 2014 and think that machines dominating Go is still 10 years away or is it more something you found with a search yesterday? Did you think in 2014 that machines dominating Go was 10 years away?
What I really want to know is what this "prediction" means. Was there really some kind of consensus on "10 years"? How seriously was this taken? It's all so vague and anyone could have said anything and meant anything.
Well, I am replying to a thread on an xkcd comic, so that is the level of seriousness that we're playing at! =)
But, ok, seriously, yes I am an armchair futurist, and also used to play go with my uncle (I am terrible at it), so since chess fell I've been waiting for go to fall too.
I am a believer in exceptional people and teams entering a space and turning established thought on its head. Another example would be spaceX. If you'd have said, ten years ago, that we'd have reusable rockets, that land on their tails like a 1950s sci-fi movie, you'd have been laughed at. On a boat! Ha ha! Crazy! Boeing still don't believe it, given what they've just managed to roll out. I've personally built my career on doing what others have said is impossible.
So, seriously then, sure, if enough people have been saying that something is still 10 years away, then other people have been listening, noticing the opportunity, working on it quietly, and a solution could happen later today.