This year, I’m doing another list of one-shot predictions. This time, with a slight difference since Astral Codex Ten is running a 2023 Prediction Contest with 50 questions. I will show these questions with my predictions in this list and I will also add some additional questions that I find interesting to forecast. As in last year’s list, I’ve spent less than 5 minutes researching each question and I have not consulted any prediction markets, betting markets, or Metaculus to make my predictions. I should also note that I answered the Astral Codex Ten questions on the 27th of December, while I answered the questions I chose myself on the 4th of January.
I’m also preparing a post-mortem of last year’s predictions, but it will take a week or so more to prepare since I’m waiting for some questions to resolve, or rather information about how they resolved.
Questions Chosen by Me
Personal
Will I be happier in 2023 than in 2022? 50%
Will I post more than 12 blogposts in 2023? 40%
Will I finish Linear Algebra Done right before April 2023? 85%
Will I finish Proofs: A Long-Form Mathematics Textbook before April 2023? 60%
Will I start weightlifting regularly? i.e going to the gym more than 1x per week on average 60%
Will I finish all of the courses I have signed up for at Tokyo University? (I have signed up for 8 courses due to visa requirements, but I don’t need to finish them all to get the necessary number of credits.) 20%
Will I catch COVID again? (I’ve recently had it for a second time.) 65%
Will I finish the year on a fully vegan diet, i.e more than the full duration of December on a vegan diet? 15%
Will I find a team to play football with in Japan? 60%
Will I get a job in an EA-funded organization? 30%
Will I earn money from working with AI alignment at the end of 2023? 1%
Will I still live in Sweden at the end of 2023? 90%
Will I live in Stockholm at the end of 2023? 65%
Will I be working full-time by the end of 2023? 75%
Will I perform better on the questions chosen by me in this list than on the questions chosen by Scott Alexander? (This is excluding the personal questions, since I can and will affect the outcome of those.) 65%
AI Development
Will the development of algorithms that do not make use of backpropagation lead to a model that beats SoTA on any widely used benchmark for large-scale models? 5%
Conditional on GPT-4 being released in 2023, will it have more than 90 trillion parameters? 3%
Will Nellie, my girlfriend who’s not following AI development at all, be scared by any advances in AI in 2023? (I will show her and discuss all the largest results during the year, if she ever says that she’s negatively affected emotionally or intellectually, then this resolves positively. I will not try to pressure her or persuade her in any way, I will only show her the results and show her the paper/blogpost about the results.) 60%
Other
Will shootings with a deadly outcome be fewer in Sweden in 2023 than in 2022? 60%
Will the electricity spot price climb above 500 öre/kwh in any day according to elbruk.se? (In any of the 4 Swedish zones) 10%
Will the average monthly electricity spot price be above 400 öre/kwh in any month according to elbruk.se? 5%
Will North Korea test more robots/nuclear weapons/missiles towards Japan? (According to at least 3 reputable news sources, with explicit mention of firing towards Japan) 30%
Will North Korea fire at least 1 ballistic missile towards Japan while I’m there on exchange? 12%
Will any UN report, released in 2023, say that global life expectancy in 2022 improved compared to 2021, when global life expectancy was 71.0 years? 75%
Arsenal winning the Premier League? 30%
Manchester City winning the Premier League? 28%
Any team in the current top 6, that is not Arsenal or Manchester City, winning the Premier League? 41%
2023 Prediction Contest
Will Vladimir Putin be President of Russia? 85%
Will Ukraine control the city of Sevastopol? 12%
Will Ukraine control the city of Luhansk? 35%
Will Ukraine control the city of Zaporizhzhia? 78%
Will there be a lasting cease-fire in the Russia-Ukraine war? 45%
Will the Kerch Bridge be destroyed, such that no vehicle can pass over it? 15%
Will an issue involving a nuclear power plant in Ukraine require evacuation of a populated area? 30%
Will a nuclear weapon be detonated (including tests and accidents)? 6%
Will a nuclear weapon be used in war (ie not a test or accident) and kill at least 10 people? 3%
Will China launch a full-scale invasion of Taiwan? 9%
Will any new country join NATO? Sweden and Finland completing the accession process would count as new countries. 65%
Will Ali Khameini cease to be Supreme Leader of Iran? 25%
Will any other war have more casualties than Russia-Ukraine? 10%
Will there be more than 25 million confirmed COVID cases in China? 65%
Will prediction markets say Joe Biden is the most likely Democratic nominee for President in 2024? 85%
Will prediction markets say Gavin Newsom is the most likely Democratic nominee for President in 2024? 10%
Will prediction markets say Donald Trump is the most likely Republican nominee for President in 2024? 25%
Will prediction markets say Ron DeSantis is the most likely Republican nominee for President in 2024? 65%
Will the Supreme Court rule against affirmative action? 65%
Will there be any change in the composition of the Supreme Court? 10%
Will Donald Trump make at least one tweet? 35%
Will Joe Biden have a positive (approval minus dispproval) rating? 40%
Will Donald Trump get indicted on criminal charges? 35%
Will a major US political figure be killed or wounded in an assassination attempt? 2%
Will Rishi Sunak be Prime Minister of the UK? 65%
Will the UK hold a general election? 35%
Will Elon Musk remain owner of Twitter? 73%
Will Twitter’s net income be higher in 2023 than in 2022? 45%
Will Twitter’s average monetizable daily users be higher in 2023 than in 2022? 65%
Will US CPI inflation for 2023 average above 4%? 76%
Will the S&P 500 index go up over 2023? 60%
Will the S&P 500 index reach a new all-time high? 4%
Will the Shanghai index of Chinese stocks go up over 2023? 60%
Will Bitcoin go up over 2023? 60%
Will Bitcoin end 2023 above $30,000? 15%
Will Tether de-peg? 5%
Will the US unemployment rate (now 3.7%) be above 4% in November 2023? 78%
Will any FAANG or Musk company accept crypto as a payment? 38%
Will OpenAI release GPT-4? 70%
Will SpaceX’s Starship reach orbit? 60%
Will an image model win Scott Alexander’s bet on compositionality, to Edwin Chen’s satisfaction? 80%
Will COVID kill at least 50% as many people in 2023 as it did in 2022? 40%
Will a new version of COVID be substantially able to escape Omicron vaccines? 35%
Will Google, Meta, Amazon, or Apple release an AR headset? 25%
Will an ordinary person be able to take a self-driving taxi from Oakland → SF during rush hour? 15%
Will a cultured meat product be available in at least one US store or restaurant for less than $30? 20%
Will a successful deepfake attempt causing real damage make the front page of a major news source? 8%
Will WHO declare a new Global Health Emergency? 15%
Will AI win a programming competition? 40%
Will someone release “DALL-E, but for videos”? 30%