[soared]

You can predict a present state of affairs if they are unknown to you.

I predict the weather in NYC is 100F. I don’t know whether or not that is true.

Really a pedantic argument, but to appease your phrasing you can reword my comment with “We predict an increase in conversion rate if we assume the user is interested in feature x more than feature y”

[mrxd]

That is a normal usage in the tech industry, but that's not how ordinary people use that word. More importantly, it's not how journalists use that word.

In ordinary language, you are making inferences about what users are interested in, then making inferences about what products are relevant to that interest. The prediction is that putting relevant products in front of users will make them buy more - but that is a trivial prediction.