"Since the AUC is a portion of the area of the unit square, its value will always be between 0 and 1.0. However, because random guessing produces the diagonal line between (0, 0) and (1, 1), which has an area of 0.5, no realistic classifier should have an AUC less than 0.5."
So it appears that not 0.8 but 0.5 is the randomness threshold; therefore 0.7 is not so bad.
Unfortunately not. IIRC, any classifier with AUC < 0.5 can be improved by just inverting its output. Real classification quality requires being significantly above 0.5 -- 0.8 is a common threshold.
"Since the AUC is a portion of the area of the unit square, its value will always be between 0 and 1.0. However, because random guessing produces the diagonal line between (0, 0) and (1, 1), which has an area of 0.5, no realistic classifier should have an AUC less than 0.5."
So it appears that not 0.8 but 0.5 is the randomness threshold; therefore 0.7 is not so bad.