Unnamed 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: Kaj_Sotala 14 August 2012 06:47:02PM *  10 points [-]

The database does not include the ages of the predictors, unfortunately, but the results seem to contradict the Maes-Garreau law. Estimating that most predictors were likely not in their fifties and sixties, it seems that the majority predicted AI would likely happen some time before their expected demise.

Actually, this was a miscommunication - the database does include them, but they were in a file Stuart wasn't looking at. Here's the analysis.

Of the predictions that could be construed to be giving timelines for the creation of human-level AI, 65 predictions either had ages on record, or were late enough that the predictor would obviously be dead by then. I assumed (via gwern's suggestion) everyone's life expectency to be 80 and then simply checked whether the predicted date would be before their expected date of death. This was true for 31 of the predictions and false for 34 of them.

Those 66 predictions included several cases where somebody had made multiple predictions over their lifetime, so I also made a comparison where I only picked the earliest prediction of everyone who had made one. This brought the number of predictions down to 46, out of which 19 had AI showing up during the predictor's lifetime and 27 were not.

Comment author: Unnamed 14 August 2012 07:20:24PM 0 points [-]

Is that more or less than what we'd expect if there was no relationship between age and predictions? If you randomly paired predictions with ages (sampling separately from the two distributions), what proportion would be within the "lifetime"?

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 15 August 2012 09:19:30AM 0 points [-]

Looks roughly like it - see this comment.