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The AI Superforecasters Are Here

astralcodexten.com

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Re: The AI Superforecasters Are Here

#31

Post by Tenoke »

guardiangod wrote: post #30

Given a powerful enough AI with enough outlays (eg. a Playwright instant), can an AI cheat by influencing the real world and self-fulfil its prediction? Eg. Is corp ABC's stock price going to go down by 10% in 30 days? Orchestrate a disinformation campaign on the 29th day to tank ABC's stock price.

In theory but in this specific example you can make a lot more money on the stock market instead if it's that doable.

In general you should judge different prediction markets differently and read the fulfilment criteria though - some are very ripe for abuse, AI or no, while others are much more ironclad.

Re: The AI Superforecasters Are Here

#32

Post by kennywinker »

gwern wrote: post #20
datadrivenangel wrote: post #2

If the forecasting models were so good that people were actually consistently beating prediction markets, they wouldn't be starting startups to be selling it. And even if it is good enough, once you're shelling out thousands of dollars a year in research costs, does that give you any remaining alpha?

> And even if it is good enough, once you're shelling out thousands of dollars a year in research costs, does that give you any remaining alpha? That's precisely why you would want to make a startup to get investment now rather than self-fund and bootstrap. That alpha isn't going to last forever, especially because everyone has access to the frontier LLMs, which keep getting better, and will eventually beat your fanc…

> I met an AI superforecaster startup founder who told me his AI had turned $35 into $2 million on Kalshi over seven months

Ok… assuming you can’t use that $2mil for some reason, simply take out a $10k line of credit and you’ll have $571 million in 7 months.

If you have the 2mil, congrats you’re 7 months away from $114B - you’re now one of the top 20 richest people in the world.

If this was truely the money printing machine they are saying it is, they would not be talking about it.

Re: The AI Superforecasters Are Here

#33

Post by ddp26 »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #2

If the forecasting models were so good that people were actually consistently beating prediction markets, they wouldn't be starting startups to be selling it. And even if it is good enough, once you're shelling out thousands of dollars a year in research costs, does that give you any remaining alpha?

Doesn't this argument prove too much? Why does AlphaSense sell their company research instead of using it to trade themselves? Why do people work on open source time series forecasting packages instead of quietly using them to trade?

Re: The AI Superforecasters Are Here

#34

Post by ddp26 »

glimshe wrote: post #14

I used AI to forecast that AI forecasters won't beat the market. We can move on now.

Almost by definition, once AI forecasters are in the market, they won't (all) be beating the market.

But why evaluate AI forecasters by beating the market? Do we evaluate deep learning by whether hedge funds make money from it in the markets? These things have far, far more utility outside of finance.

Re: The AI Superforecasters Are Here

#35

Post by Tenoke »

fer wrote: post #22
datadrivenangel wrote: post #2

If the forecasting models were so good that people were actually consistently beating prediction markets, they wouldn't be starting startups to be selling it. And even if it is good enough, once you're shelling out thousands of dollars a year in research costs, does that give you any remaining alpha?

Agree, to an extent. The link certainly smells like an ad. If the predictions are on lower volume markets (i.e. no institutional investors with actual quants behind) the compounding power stops. Also that means it can't beat institutional investors. So the reasonable option is to monetize what you can.

He's been interested in forecasting since a long time before there was any money in it, and still hyped Metacalculus (free research project) and Manifold (play money) because he is interested in the subject. If it smells like an ad it is because your ad sense is faulty.

Re: The AI Superforecasters Are Here

#36

Post by Tenoke »

kennywinker wrote: post #32
gwern wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And even if it is good enough, once you're shelling out thousands of dollars a year in research costs, does that give you any remaining alpha? That's precisely why you would want to make a startup to get investment now rather than self-fund and bootstrap. That alpha isn't going to last forever, especially because everyone has access to the frontier LLMs, which keep getting better, and will eventually beat your fanc…

> I met an AI superforecaster startup founder who told me his AI had turned $35 into $2 million on Kalshi over seven months Ok… assuming you can’t use that $2mil for some reason, simply take out a $10k line of credit and you’ll have $571 million in 7 months. If you have the 2mil, congrats you’re 7 months away from $114B - you’re now one of the top 20 richest people in the world. If this was truely the money printing…

1. The liquidity is not infinite to compound that easily.

2. The alpha dries up with more players, even in the year or whatever since that founder started.

Re: The AI Superforecasters Are Here

#37

Post by jazzyjackson »

jdmoreira wrote: post #28
guelo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We elected con man so we're becoming a swindler nation. In a just world the Andreesen David Sacks types would be in jail stripped of all their money.

Just out of curiosity, what is your legitimate criticism of Adreessen and Sacks?

Andreesen is full speed ahead on 1984-minority-report surveillance besides all the unethical crypto investments geared toward swindling normies. Anything that looks like it would turn a profit was fair investment for a16z-crypto, no matter the pump and dumping that was going on. His latest interview on the Joe Rogan show was all about how harmful the anti-flock-camera people are, trying to prevent police from solving crimes ! Imagine !

Re: The AI Superforecasters Are Here

#38

Post by gwern »

kennywinker wrote: post #32
gwern wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And even if it is good enough, once you're shelling out thousands of dollars a year in research costs, does that give you any remaining alpha? That's precisely why you would want to make a startup to get investment now rather than self-fund and bootstrap. That alpha isn't going to last forever, especially because everyone has access to the frontier LLMs, which keep getting better, and will eventually beat your fanc…

> I met an AI superforecaster startup founder who told me his AI had turned $35 into $2 million on Kalshi over seven months Ok… assuming you can’t use that $2mil for some reason, simply take out a $10k line of credit and you’ll have $571 million in 7 months. If you have the 2mil, congrats you’re 7 months away from $114B - you’re now one of the top 20 richest people in the world. If this was truely the money printing…

You're attacking a strawman. No one is claiming that you can pull off that multiplier at arbitrary amounts arbitrary amounts of times. And 7 months is plenty of calendar time for those arbitrages to disappear, given the attention on the area and the rapid rate of development. (Warren Buffett can't pull off his early trades now either, doesn't mean he was stupid or grifting in taking early investment.)

Re: The AI Superforecasters Are Here

#39

Post by ffitch »

kennywinker wrote: post #32
gwern wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And even if it is good enough, once you're shelling out thousands of dollars a year in research costs, does that give you any remaining alpha? That's precisely why you would want to make a startup to get investment now rather than self-fund and bootstrap. That alpha isn't going to last forever, especially because everyone has access to the frontier LLMs, which keep getting better, and will eventually beat your fanc…

> I met an AI superforecaster startup founder who told me his AI had turned $35 into $2 million on Kalshi over seven months Ok… assuming you can’t use that $2mil for some reason, simply take out a $10k line of credit and you’ll have $571 million in 7 months. If you have the 2mil, congrats you’re 7 months away from $114B - you’re now one of the top 20 richest people in the world. If this was truely the money printing…

from the article:

  I asked the guy who turned $35 into $2 million in seven months on Kalshi whether, in another seven months, he would be able to 100,000x his money a second time to $200 billion. Unsurprisingly, he said no - there’s only so much easy money on Kalshi, and his AI had already taken it all (also, other people with similar AIs are starting to fight him for it!)

Re: The AI Superforecasters Are Here

#40

Post by mikgp »

It feels like Scott is taking the bull case here - but like “perfect” information will pervert markets in bizarre ways.

As soon as the prediction market says “this path here has a 25% chance of curing cancer” all sorts of money is moved away from other things.

It will absolutely cause political outcomes not just predict them.

And then of course there’s the cheating element. Anything that’s feasible to change the outcome.

Maybe this just contributes to efficient markets? Or maybe the continued quests towards utopia have dystopic externalities.

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