Why is this so ambiguous? Far and distant are synonyms, right?

I suspect that it's because you can use "far" to describe a path you have traveled, in a way you can't with "distant". "We have come far", "We are far along our journey." So that "far" can mean far from a point of origin as well as a point of destination. Whereas "distant" only means distant from that point of reference.

So I thought the title was ambiguous without a preposition to clarify "far": "far away", for example.

Perhaps it's in the framing of the question: "the current state of x" implies that it's being considered as an ongoing process, which implicitly has an origin and a conceivable end.

Also, putting the subject as "we are..." puts it in the frame of an ongoing journey. If you say "That lighthouse over there, it is far." there is no ambiguity that the lighthouse is distant from us. Also "Effective computer vision: it is far" is not really ambiguous.

"we are far" to me means "we are distant (from the objective)"

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/far#Adverb

If it was "far ahead", or "we've come far" I'd agree with you

It's almost gramatically incorrect to say "we're really far", unless it is a response to a question - "how far are we from home?", "we're really far". In that case it works because the subject is implicit.

It's like you can't have a title that is "It is the best smartphone yet."

I was disappointed.

* http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/244893/what-is-th...

So in this context far and close are synonyms? English is so weird.

* We are really, really far along the way

* We are really, really far from our objective

It seems clear that most native English speakers in this thread have seen the ambiguity and started by assuming the first option, whereas non-native English speakers seem to have assumed the second, and may not have noticed the other option at all.

But see also: Contranym/contronym/Auto-antonym:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym#Examples

For example, a person who had no experience/knowledge of scales like that shown would have a tough time discerning what the reason for humour was.

Are we really far from our origin? Or are we really far from the destination?

In the absence of a complete statement, people tend to insert their own bias, which can lead to confusion.

Can there be no articles about how far we've come until we've reached the stars? Or singularity?

Except the "along the path" the path part is neither stated or implied. Rather then just being a grammar or language issue I think people are projecting their optimistic opinion of AI onto the title, with no basis for it based on what's actually written. Objectively if you read the title how it should be construed as negative, we have a long way to go, etc.

The title is simply ambiguous.