It’s unclear to me what “human-level AGI” is, and it’s also unclear to me why the prediction is about the moment an AGI is turned on somewhere. From my perspective, the important thing about artificial intelligence is that it will accelerate technological, economic, and scientific progress. So, the more important thing to predict is something like, “When will real economic growth rates reach at least 30% worldwide?”
The tenth virtue is precision. One comes and says: The quantity is between 1 and 100. Another says: the quantity is between 40 and 50. If the quantity is 42 they are both correct, but the second prediction was more useful and exposed itself to a stricter test. What is true of one apple may not be true of another apple; thus more can be said about a single apple than about all the apples in the world. The narrowest statements slice deepest, the cutting edge of the blade.
I generally agree with this but think the alternative goal of “make forecasting easier” is just as good, might actually make aggregate forecasts more accurate in the long run, and may require things that seemingly undermine the virtue of precision.
More concretely, if an underdefined question makes it easier for people to share whatever beliefs they already have, then facilitates rich conversation among those people, that’s better than if a highly specific question prevents people from making a prediction at all. At least as much, if not more, of the value of making public, visual predictions like this comes from the ensuing conversation and feedback than from the precision of the forecasts themselves.
Additionally, a lot of assumptions get made at the time the question is defined more precisely, which could prematurely limit the space of conversation or ideas. There are good reasons why different people define AGI the way they do, or the moment of “AGI arrival” the way they do, that might not come up if the question askers had taken a point of view.
It’s unclear to me what “human-level AGI” is, and it’s also unclear to me why the prediction is about the moment an AGI is turned on somewhere. From my perspective, the important thing about artificial intelligence is that it will accelerate technological, economic, and scientific progress. So, the more important thing to predict is something like, “When will real economic growth rates reach at least 30% worldwide?”
It’s worth comparing the vagueness in this question with the specificity in this one on Metaculus. From the virtues of rationality,
I generally agree with this but think the alternative goal of “make forecasting easier” is just as good, might actually make aggregate forecasts more accurate in the long run, and may require things that seemingly undermine the virtue of precision.
More concretely, if an underdefined question makes it easier for people to share whatever beliefs they already have, then facilitates rich conversation among those people, that’s better than if a highly specific question prevents people from making a prediction at all. At least as much, if not more, of the value of making public, visual predictions like this comes from the ensuing conversation and feedback than from the precision of the forecasts themselves.
Additionally, a lot of assumptions get made at the time the question is defined more precisely, which could prematurely limit the space of conversation or ideas. There are good reasons why different people define AGI the way they do, or the moment of “AGI arrival” the way they do, that might not come up if the question askers had taken a point of view.