Interesting.

Of course, as you know, the current thinking is that they (technology) have solved it and it cannot be done (see Self-Organizing Criticality, etc.) In addition, it is considered a waste of time too! LOL.

The field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has had it's fits and starts. Some headway has been made wherein "knowledge experts" inject their rulesets for various situations into a computer program which then spits out options. The rule is that, a human will always exceed the computer in judgement (provided he is an "expert").

They say a five year kid has more ability to outthink any computer on the planet and then some. The human brain has some 300 billion synaptic connections. All the super computers in the world cannot compete in the area of reasoning and logic...and then can only spit out what the experts have programmed into it (with some junk now and again).

So the question becomes, What does an expert today do to predict an earthquake (using a given that computer tools which can access data at high speed and look at data in different ways)? Or what will a future expert do to predict a quake?

Any science process involves:
1)Defining the problem to solve
2)Reading the background material on What the problem is
3)Reading about what others have done/tried to solve the problem
4)Accepting / Rejecting previous hypotheses
5)Formulating variations and or new hypotheses which are predictive.
6) (Implied in 5 - using "domain knowledge experts" for the various facets of the problem ...if it spans across multiple science domains.).
7)Gathering data and data analysis
8)Loop back to 5 to reformulate the hypothesis
and continue the process.
9) Maintain freedom from biases whether they be political, societal, institutional, etc. and let ones nose follow the science wherever it may go. Of course this ties into getting and sustaning funding to continue the endeavor...and this is where the process breaks down lots of times.

IMHO, there's been some "nice tries" but incompleteness in 1,4,5,6,7. Especially lacking is in the area of 1, 6, 7.

If elements of #9 block steps 4,5,6, and 7 then a state of stalemate exists. Also, if #1 is too narrow then it effects 4 (and not rejecting hypotheses which leads to a another stalemate situation). This in turn, blocks inhibits # 7 and this is where "the gold" lays. Most of the significant discoveries are from folks who stick real close to the data and data analysis (and who also have a good base knowledge (from #2 & #3) to build upon)

So to answer your question, IMHO, it cannot be answered as of the moment since the steps above have thusfar been incompletely and improperly executed.

Of course, that could change at Any Time.

My bet is on a cross-disciplined person (such as Rundle for example though he is handcuffed by instituional biases to some degree no doubt). He's a theoretical physicist and geophysicist.

Just my .02 worth :)