Participate in the Hybrid Forecasting-Persuasion Tournament (on X-risk topics)

By Jhrosenberg @ 2022-04-25T22:13 (+53)

​​Tl;dr: Phil Tetlock's research team is running a tournament that will team up superforecasters with subject-matter experts to produce accurate forecasts and informative rationales on existential risk topics. If you would like to express interest in participating, please answer some initial questions about your views on X-risk in this form by May 13th.

More on the tournament

The Hybrid Forecasting-Persuasion Tournament will explore potential threats to humanity in the next century, with a focus on artificial intelligence, biosecurity, climate, and nuclear war in the short-term (<3 years), medium-term (10 years), and long-term (30+ years). Participants will also work in teams to craft high-quality explanations of their forecasts that persuade others to change their views—in the right direction. Sample questions are here.

We are looking for participants who:

• Have studied existential risk topics, formally or informally. If you're unsure whether you qualify, we encourage you to submit the form below anyway. We intend to include participants with a wide range of relevant experience.
• Can devote at least 3 hours per week to forecasting for 12-16 weeks beginning in May.

We will provide more detail on compensation for participation after selection process but it will range from $2,000 up to $10,000, depending on your level of engagement and accuracy.

To express your interest, please fill out this form by May 13th. Ten respondents who complete this survey will receive a $2,000 prize (and the chances of winning will rise as a function of the accuracy of your answers to certain forecasting questions in the survey). Note that space is limited and we will follow up with as many people as we can accommodate.

Why participate? 

• Impact. We aim to improve society’s understanding of topics that could hugely affect many generations to come.
  • Will MacAskill says, “I’m very excited to further work on forecasting existential risks, and think that this is an excellent team to drive this project forward. I think that participating in this tournament is a very high-impact activity.”
  • Luke Muelhauser says, “I read [an internal summary] of the hybrid forecasting+persuasion tournament. The tournament wasn't funded by Open Philanthropy, but based on that summary I think it's an exciting project, and has the potential to produce valuable forecasts of variables related to x-risk, and test the utility of some recent innovations in forecasting methodology (e.g. reciprocal scoring). I also expect to fund later x-risk-related forecasting work that would ideally learn from the results of this tournament. I say all this to help subject matter experts assess the value of contributing their expertise to this project in small or large ways."
  • Phil Tetlock says, “This tournament will explore how much predictive value we can extract from human judgment in ultra-high-stakes domains that some thoughtful skeptics have written off as inherently indeterminate.”
• Curiosity and engagement. The tournament will be fun. You first work independently and then on teams of other talented people. Expect lots of teachable moments.
• Professional development. Forecasting skills are widely useful. This tournament will include a training module (CHAMPS KNOW) that was shown in a randomized trial to boost forecasting accuracy—plus participation itself will provide valuable practice.

More information

A more detailed write-up about the tournament is here. If you have questions, please email erpersuasiontournament@gmail.com. 

We would also greatly appreciate if you share this with others who may be interested.