Basically, predictions about the future that are farfetched or extreme often get placed in this future time period. A period that's close enough that it will happen 'within our lifetime.' Yet far enough away that it allows enough time for the necessary changes or advancement to take place. (It also conveniently allows the person making the claim leeway to not be proven wrong in the near future, nor held accountable in the distant future, by which time their claim may have been forgotten or amended.)
So, to give an example, let's take something sufficiently sci-fi: teleportation.
If someone made the claim we'll have Star Trek style teleportation devices within the next six months no one would believe it. In fact, they'd view the claim as positively silly.
However, if someone made the claim we'll have teleportation devices in thirty years' time, then that would be slightly different. Especially if the claim was being made by someone from within the ivory towers of academia, or some other lofty platform. Then the average person might think, "Well, it seems unbelievable, but who knows how far technology will have advanced by then? And if the boffins are saying it's theoretically possible, who knows.."
Suddenly there's an ever-so-slight plausibility, and the prospect that it could happen within the lifetime of that average person makes the now plausible scenario scary (or exciting - depending on their viewpoint, or the specific thing being predicted to happen). Hence, it becomes something worth taking seriously.
Scary Future
Often the predictions are of the scary variety. End of the world type scenarios. In the latest case that AI will wipe out humanity. In other variations that scientists predict the ice caps will melt by the year [insert a number ten or twenty years from whatever the present date is]. We see similar goldilocks zone predictions from literal religious doomsayers. Though they're often stupid/sincere enough to predict an actual specific date.
The recent AI prediction was that AI could kill everybody by the end of the decade. Not imminently, not next week. Not this coming January. But a vague ballpark date, sufficiently in the future to appear plausible. Preceded, of course, by the hedge word could.
"I said it could happen, I never said it would happen!"
The end of the decade is admittedly on the near side of the goldilocks zone, but people are already a little spooked by the speed at which AI is developing. (Just look at how much better the AIs have got at rendering Will Smith eating spaghetti. Surely Terminator style scenarios have at least a 10% chance of coming to fruition within the next five years.)
I'm being facetious, and I shouldn't be, as the technology is impressive, but the Terminator scenarios make a fair hearing for the argument almost impossible. When that fictional movie was made in the 1980s the makers had the sense and good storytelling to put their post-apocalypse world forty years in the future - deep into the goldilocks zone of plausibility. Whereas these guys are putting their real world predictions on the shallowest edge of believability.
It makes the climate alarmism look measured in comparison.
Jetsons Future
On the flip side we also see utopian predictions placed within the goldilocks zone. One of which being that AI will solve all our problems. Or that twenty years from now all diseases will be cured.
Another common prediction is that, "We'll have bases on Mars in ten years' time".
It's seemingly always ten years away. Close enough to whet the appetite for adventure, yet never close enough to touch. It'll happen in my lifetime ..but they were saying that when I was a child, and now I'm forty-four. (Perhaps it'll be a bold retirement move for me.)
Conclusion
I think generally anything predicted to happen within the goldilocks zone can be dismissed. If not as outright hokum, then at least as something speculative and unfounded enough that it shouldn't be taken overly serious.
You certainly shouldn't allow it to elicit an emotional response. Which is what the people making such claims often want. They may want legislation passed on the back of that emotion. They may want to exploit the fear/hope in order to make money or further their career. They may simply want to gain an audience and following. It could also be the case that they're genuine believers that want to win others over to their cause. Perhaps exaggerating or overstating their case to leverage emotion. Often it's a combination of the above, as is generally the case in life, where passions and careers overlap.
Then again, what do I know, perhaps they're just right about everything.
Perhaps AI will kill us all within the next five years. Perhaps we'll escape to Mars in the next four. Perhaps the polar ice caps will melt and drown all the Terminator robots after we leave. Perhaps we'll come back to Earth just in time for Judgement Day.
Next Up: Is AI Out of Control?
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