olalonde comments on AI timeline predictions: are we getting better? - Less Wrong

54 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 17 August 2012 07:07AM

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Comment author: RolfAndreassen 14 August 2012 05:23:26PM 2 points [-]

The only noticeable difference is that amateurs lacked the upswing at 50 years, and were relatively more likely to push their predictions beyond 75 years. This does not look like good news for the experts - if their performance can't be distinguished from amateurs, what contribution is their expertise making?

I believe you can put your case even a bit more strongly than this. With this amount of data, the differences you point out are clearly within the range of random fluctuations; the human eye picks them out, but does not see the huge reference class of similarly "different" distributions. I predict with confidence over 95% that a formal statistical analysis would find no difference between the "expert" and "amateur" distributions.

Comment author: olalonde 14 August 2012 06:11:39PM *  3 points [-]

Perhaps their contribution is in influencing the non experts? It is very likely that the non experts base their estimates on whatever predictions respected experts have made.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 14 August 2012 06:16:18PM 2 points [-]

Seems pretty unlikely - because you'd then expect the non-experts to have the same predicted dates as the experts, but not the same distribution of time to AI.

Also the examples I saw were mainly of non-experts saying: AI will happen around here because well, I say so. (sometimes spiced with Moore's law).