Steve Ballmer

By 2019 computers will routinely recognize speech and intention, people will have instant access to the world's information, and paper will no longer be used for note taking and communication.

“Ten years from now when we sit together we’ll look back and we’ll say, ‘Wasn’t technology primitive in 2009? Computers didn’t recognize our speech, our voice, our intention. We didn’t have instantaneous access to the world’s information. We’ve gotten rid of paper as a means of note taking and communication.'”

Said on

5 November 2009 · News conference in Tokyo, November 2009

Source

Steve Ballmer wants to shout at his TV · Network World

Should come true

2019

How sure they sounded

we'll look back and we'll say (stated as fact)

Categories

TechnologyAI

Importance

3 of 5 · About how people across the world interact with computers and information.

Outcome

Partly right

By 2019 speech recognition was mainstream (Siri 2011, Alexa 2014) and smartphones gave near-instant access to information, so two of the three claims came true. But paper had not been "gotten rid of" for note taking and communication, so only part of the forecast happened.

Evidence:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siri
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Alexa