After the effective dismantling of USAID, there is heightened uncertainty about the future of global health and continuity of US government’s funding for international health programs from malaria to HIV to vaccines. To contribute to the public discourse on these critical issues, this project, generously supported by GiveWell and Open Philanthropy, presented a series of forecasting questions to Good Judgment’s Superforecasters. Their forecasts and insights are summarized here.
Superforecasters assess that natural zoonosis is three times more likely to be the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic than either a biomedical research-related accident or some other process or mechanism. Asked to assign a probability to what caused the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in human populations, more than 50 Superforecasters engaged in extensive online discussions starting on 1 December 2023.
This project focused on individual reviews of Joseph Carlsmith’s paper, “Is power-seeking AI an existential risk?,” and featured forecasts on a dozen key questions about risks related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). It ran from August to October 2022, with a follow-up round in spring 2023, and was made possible with generous support from Open Philanthropy. The project was divided into two phases. Phase I, the Main Project, entailed an in-depth evaluation of Joseph Carlsmith’s paper. In Phase II, a Supplementary Project, the Superforecasters provided forecasts on four questions related to AGI.
The Federal Reserve’s target range for the federal funds rate is the single most important driver in financial markets. Anticipating inflection points in the Fed’s policy has immense value. Good Judgment’s new whitepaper compares the forecasts of two groups—those produced by Good Judgment Inc’s Superforecasters and those from the futures markets using the CME FedWatch Tool —on the outcomes of four Federal Reserve meetings from 1 February 2023 through 14 June 2023. We find that the Superforecasters were 66% more accurate than the CME FedWatch Tool forecasts when using Brier scoring, and the Superforecasters anticipated the June inflection point before the CME FedWatch Tool.
Good Judgment’s public Superforecasts about when a COVID vaccine will be widely distributed have captured attention from Wall Street to Main Street. The MAN Group now suggests that these Superforecasts can serve as a leading market indicator of how shares in “firms exposed to an extension of the pandemic” will perform.
On 8 September 2020, the Superforecasters estimated a 71% chance that there would be enough FDA-approved vaccine available to vaccinate 25 million people sometime in Q4 ’20 or Q1 ’21. Over the next two weeks, their probability forecast for that same outcome dropped quickly down to 54%.
Investors who followed our vaccine forecast had an opportunity to anticipate the market. The Goldman Sachs Health Risk Basket of airline, casino, hotel, and cruise stocks dropped around five percentage points, but not until 21 September, well after the Superforecasters signaled their increased pessimism about the timing of a vaccine.
The story in “View from the Floor” concludes: “if there is one thing better than the wisdom of the crowds, it is the wisdom of well-informed crowds.” The Superforecasters are that crowd.
To better understand the consequences of climate change over the short-, medium- and long-term, the Forethought Foundation turned to Good Judgment to forecast how rising global temperatures will impact on critical issues like drought, floods, food availability, and severe weather events. For this project, which was launched in conjunction with William MacAskill’s new book, What We Owe The Future, the Superforecasters also made predictions on future levels of CO2 emissions, the future of the Amazon biome, the cost of solar energy, and the risk of human extinction. The resulting report was released in August 2022.
To gauge what to expect over the next 10 years, the thinktank adelphi teamed up with Good Judgment, the world’s most accurate geopolitical and global risk forecasting entity.
Published in May 2022 by the Weathering Risk initiative, the study uses the unsurpassed track record of the Superforecasters to help convert the uncertainty of geopolitics amidst the climate crisis into manageable risks. It sets out seven key questions which should be on the G7’s agenda.
The Arab Strategy Forum turned to Good Judgment’s Superforecasters for insights on global and regional trends for the next decade. Their forecasts make fascinating reading.
An innovator in the food industry worked with Good Judgment to turn its scenarios around alternative proteins into a first-of-its-kind index of future food trends.
Learn more »A Sovereign Wealth Fund wanted to enhance the Fund's internal forecasting capabilities so that it can deliver better returns for its country's future. Good Judgment provided a customized combination of training and practice on Good Judgment Open.
Learn more »Good Judgment worked with the Center for New American Security on a “case study [that] examined how [the Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL)] used Good Judgment Inc.’s forecasting reports to inform its decisions on how to support Colombia in its eradication of illicit coca crops.” The authors discovered that the “predictive approach to agility provides decisionmakers with rigorous and regularly updated predictions of the costs and benefits associated with competing decisions.”
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