Some quick points: - Eli Lifland and I had a podcast episode about this topic a few weeks back. This goes into some detail on the details and viability of forecasting+AI being a cost-effective EA intervention. - We at QURI have been investigating a certain thread of ambitious forecasting (which would require a lot of AI) for the last few years. We’re a small group, but I think our writing and work would be interesting for people in this area. - Our post Prioritization Research for Advancing Wisdom and Intelligence from 2021 described much of this area as “Wisdom and Intelligence” interventions, and there I similarly came to the conclusion that AI+epistemics was likely the most exciting generic area there. I’m still excited for more prioritization work and direct work in this area. - The FTX Future Fund made epistemics and AI+epistemics a priority. I’d be curious to see other funders research this area more. (Hat tip to the new OP forecasting team) - “A forecasting bot made by the AI company FutureSearch is making profit on the forecasting platform Manifold. The y-axis shows profit. This suggests it’s better even than collective prediction of the existing human forecasters.” → I want to flag here that it’s not too hard for a smart human to do as good or better. Strong human forecasters are expected to make a substantial profit. A more accurate statement here is, “This suggests that it’s powerful for automation to add value to a forecasting platform, and to outperform some human forecasters”, which is a lower bar. I expect it will be a long time until AIs beat Humans+AIs in forecasting, but I agree AIs will add value.
Happy to see conversation and excitement on this!
Some quick points:
- Eli Lifland and I had a podcast episode about this topic a few weeks back. This goes into some detail on the details and viability of forecasting+AI being a cost-effective EA intervention.
- We at QURI have been investigating a certain thread of ambitious forecasting (which would require a lot of AI) for the last few years. We’re a small group, but I think our writing and work would be interesting for people in this area.
- Our post Prioritization Research for Advancing Wisdom and Intelligence from 2021 described much of this area as “Wisdom and Intelligence” interventions, and there I similarly came to the conclusion that AI+epistemics was likely the most exciting generic area there. I’m still excited for more prioritization work and direct work in this area.
- The FTX Future Fund made epistemics and AI+epistemics a priority. I’d be curious to see other funders research this area more. (Hat tip to the new OP forecasting team)
- “A forecasting bot made by the AI company FutureSearch is making profit on the forecasting platform Manifold. The y-axis shows profit. This suggests it’s better even than collective prediction of the existing human forecasters.” → I want to flag here that it’s not too hard for a smart human to do as good or better. Strong human forecasters are expected to make a substantial profit. A more accurate statement here is, “This suggests that it’s powerful for automation to add value to a forecasting platform, and to outperform some human forecasters”, which is a lower bar. I expect it will be a long time until AIs beat Humans+AIs in forecasting, but I agree AIs will add value.
Thanks that’s helpful!