Thanks for writing this! Some reasons I would steelman continued funding towards tetlockian or PM-style forecasting:
Source and screen for talent. There sure is some correlation between forecasting well and doing important things in EA. Just picking some people I know: Joel Becker, another former #1 Manifold trader, went on to join METR and then do their famous uplift studies. Eli Lifland went on to help make AI 2027. Peter Wildeford started Rethink Priorities, now IAPS. And some of your own track record in making good early-stage EA grants is here.
Beyond that, a bunch of smart and interesting people have expressed a lot of interest in forecasting, from banner bearers like Scott Alexander and Vitalik Buterin and Robin Hanson, to surprising cases like Anthony Giovanetti (of Slay the Spire) to <anon famous AI researcher who DM’d me> to Sam Altman. I do think there’s some amount of intellectual fashion-ism going on here, but also, you should fish where the fish are.
When funding is abundant, one bottleneck becomes finding (and building consensus around) talent; if the only thing that a bunch of money spent on forecasting does is to identify good people, that may be worth it.
Fast, accurate info in times of chaos. Prediction markets are actually quite good at distilling through noise during times of high uncertainty, eg recently around russia/ukraine war and the iran war. Manifold’s usage numbers spike every time there’s a crisis. Because PMs pay a high premium towards being speedy, they’re often the fastest trustworthy source of data. If the world becomes more chaotic due to faster tech growth, it may be quite valuable to have this place to stay up to date.
New unlocks from growth in AI capabilities. Historically, one very expensive input into forecasting is forecaster time. As LLMs catch up to top human forecasters, it’ll soon be cheap to get a calibrated answer to any question one might ask. On priors, this should help us with making better decisions or making futarchy possible. I agree this is somewhat speculative still, and wish more people were trying things in this space.
Do you have any reason to think those people succeeded in other areas as a result of the screen from forecasting success ? Did someone give them opportunities they wouldn’t have had without being a top forecaster?
Sorry for the late reply but I have an anecdotal example: myself. I’m a lawyer by trade and there’s no way I would have been able to get involved with Epoch AI had it not been for me being one of the best Metaculus forecasters. The most notable thing I did was writing How Fast Could Robotics Production Scale Up? with JS Denain.
I know some of the top forecasters have worked for hedge funds although their backgrounds may have helped there? Not very knowledgeable about this and it’s possible that you’re right overall and it’s anecdotal but there’s at least one example.
Did you look at the report? I know the title is very forecasting related but most of it is not forecasting unless you consider all of the research and data collection as purely forecasting. I don’t think that’s the same thing even if there’s overlap in the skills, I wouldn’t consider what OWID does with their data collection (not the opinion articles) as forecasting. Here we did mix both but the report has value in itself without the forecasting part, imo.
Potential other example: the Bridgewater Contest on Metaculus. They’re supposedly reaching out to top contestants. A lot of finance students are invited but apparently some from schools they wouldn’t usually try to get interns from.
I know a few of the top students have gotten internships but I have no idea if forecasting ends up being a matter in the recruitment process. They’re going through the trouble of organizing it (and paying for) for the third year now, so I guess that must at least matter a little?
To be clear, I’m not weighing in on whether this was a good argument or not but bringing examples that might fit the bill seems relevant.
Does forecasting asymmetrically favor people trying to do good things? my impression is that it’s a general fuel and what it ends up being useful for is highly contingent on who knows what.
I agree that forecasting is an ok way to find talent but not much of this has been done.
I agree that in chaos, they are useful but I don’t think they hit the bar for EA funding.
Sure, it’s speculative. If the AIs will use them, then they will also make them and we can just relax for now on the forecasting and let them do it in the future.
Thanks for writing this! Some reasons I would steelman continued funding towards tetlockian or PM-style forecasting:
Source and screen for talent. There sure is some correlation between forecasting well and doing important things in EA. Just picking some people I know: Joel Becker, another former #1 Manifold trader, went on to join METR and then do their famous uplift studies. Eli Lifland went on to help make AI 2027. Peter Wildeford started Rethink Priorities, now IAPS. And some of your own track record in making good early-stage EA grants is here.
Beyond that, a bunch of smart and interesting people have expressed a lot of interest in forecasting, from banner bearers like Scott Alexander and Vitalik Buterin and Robin Hanson, to surprising cases like Anthony Giovanetti (of Slay the Spire) to <anon famous AI researcher who DM’d me> to Sam Altman. I do think there’s some amount of intellectual fashion-ism going on here, but also, you should fish where the fish are.
When funding is abundant, one bottleneck becomes finding (and building consensus around) talent; if the only thing that a bunch of money spent on forecasting does is to identify good people, that may be worth it.
Fast, accurate info in times of chaos. Prediction markets are actually quite good at distilling through noise during times of high uncertainty, eg recently around russia/ukraine war and the iran war. Manifold’s usage numbers spike every time there’s a crisis. Because PMs pay a high premium towards being speedy, they’re often the fastest trustworthy source of data. If the world becomes more chaotic due to faster tech growth, it may be quite valuable to have this place to stay up to date.
New unlocks from growth in AI capabilities. Historically, one very expensive input into forecasting is forecaster time. As LLMs catch up to top human forecasters, it’ll soon be cheap to get a calibrated answer to any question one might ask. On priors, this should help us with making better decisions or making futarchy possible. I agree this is somewhat speculative still, and wish more people were trying things in this space.
Do you have any reason to think those people succeeded in other areas as a result of the screen from forecasting success ? Did someone give them opportunities they wouldn’t have had without being a top forecaster?
My guess is this is just positive selection.
Sorry for the late reply but I have an anecdotal example: myself. I’m a lawyer by trade and there’s no way I would have been able to get involved with Epoch AI had it not been for me being one of the best Metaculus forecasters. The most notable thing I did was writing How Fast Could Robotics Production Scale Up? with JS Denain.
I know some of the top forecasters have worked for hedge funds although their backgrounds may have helped there? Not very knowledgeable about this and it’s possible that you’re right overall and it’s anecdotal but there’s at least one example.
No offense, but your example is using a track record in forecasting to get a job where you post forecasts. I asked about success in other areas.
Did you look at the report? I know the title is very forecasting related but most of it is not forecasting unless you consider all of the research and data collection as purely forecasting. I don’t think that’s the same thing even if there’s overlap in the skills, I wouldn’t consider what OWID does with their data collection (not the opinion articles) as forecasting. Here we did mix both but the report has value in itself without the forecasting part, imo.
Potential other example: the Bridgewater Contest on Metaculus. They’re supposedly reaching out to top contestants. A lot of finance students are invited but apparently some from schools they wouldn’t usually try to get interns from. I know a few of the top students have gotten internships but I have no idea if forecasting ends up being a matter in the recruitment process. They’re going through the trouble of organizing it (and paying for) for the third year now, so I guess that must at least matter a little?
To be clear, I’m not weighing in on whether this was a good argument or not but bringing examples that might fit the bill seems relevant.
Does forecasting asymmetrically favor people trying to do good things? my impression is that it’s a general fuel and what it ends up being useful for is highly contingent on who knows what.
I agree that forecasting is an ok way to find talent but not much of this has been done.
I agree that in chaos, they are useful but I don’t think they hit the bar for EA funding.
Sure, it’s speculative. If the AIs will use them, then they will also make them and we can just relax for now on the forecasting and let them do it in the future.