Datasets:

jijivski

/

metaculus_binary

like 0

Will advanced LIGO announce discovery of gravitational waves by Jan. 31 2016?

no

Will SpaceX successfully land a Falcon 9 rocket on a barge by February 28, 2016?

no

Will we confirm evidence for megastructures orbiting the star KIC 8462852?

no

Will Lockheed Martin and Skunkworks announce a successful test of a break-even compact fusion reactor by April 2019?

no

The FAA to soon open the door to commercial use of unmanned aerial systems?

no

Will the cost of sequencing a human genome fall below $500 by mid 2016?

no

Will the Twin Prime Conjecture be positively resolved in 2016?

no

Will AI systems that can generate a synopsis of a viewed video soon exist?

no

In late 2014 Google [announced] a deep learning system that could automatically generate a descriptive caption of an arbitrary photograph. A significantly greater challenge is to provide an understandable and comparably accurate description of the events taking place in a short video (without audio included).

Will the experimental Wendelstein 7-X stellarator fusion device be a success?

no

Will quantized gravity soon be tested in the lab?

no

In the coming months, will a robot/AI injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm?

no

Although far from human level in many respects, artificially intelligent (AI) systems and autonomous agents of greatly increasing sophistication are entering society in the form of, for example, automated trading, autonomous vehicles, robots, and autonomous weapons. Such systems are beginning to make "decisions" that could save or cost human lives. For example: Recently, an industrial robot in Germany, through a programming error, [fatally injured factory worker]. Autonomous vehicles are likely to save many lives as compared to human drivers, but could in principle malfunction, or in rare cases [be forced to "choose" to injure one person in order to save others] (a real-life version of the philosophical [trolley problem].) [Autonomous weapons] engineered to to choose and engage targets without human intervention exist, and although they are (presently, formally) eschewed by most militaries, seem likely to be deployed in coming years unless prevented by [international agreement].

Will NASA's K2 Mission detect a potentially habitable planet in 2015?

no

Does Stephen Hawking's September paper contain the essence of a solution to the black hole information paradox?

no

Is Graph Isomorphism solvable in Polynomial Time?

no

Will superparticles be discovered at the Large Hadron Collider by July 8, 2016?

no

By July 1, 2016 will a 'biohacker' create a new life form that enters the ecosystem?

no

Will the AI's major professional society take a position on "killer robots"?

no

Will a clinical trial begin by the end of 2017 using CRISPR to genetically modify a living human?

yes

Will the next elected U.S. President be (as usual) a white, Christian, non-Hispanic man?

yes

Will Google make a "watershed" announcement about quantum computing in early December?

no

Experimental tests of quantum effects in cognition?

no

Is Nefertiti's tomb adjacent to King Tut's?

no

[Tutorial:] Will Metaculus have over one thousand users signed up by May 1, 2016.

yes

Are there physical systems with properties that are impossible in principle to predict?

no

Has new a planetary-mass object been discovered in the outer solar system?

no

Will the IAU-sanctioned Exoplanet Names come into regular use?

no

Has a new boson been discovered at the LHC?

no

Will the SEC approve the IEX's application to operate as a registered exchange?

no

By the end of 2017 will a gene drive targeting malaria be initiated?

no

In 2016, will an AI player beat a professionally ranked human in the ancient game of Go?

yes

The [game of Go] originated in China more than 2,500 years ago. While similar to chess in many ways, Go is much more minimalist in its ruleset and more esoteric in strategy. The aspect of pattern recognition and the huge state space of possible moves in Go (vastly greater than chess) make it an excellent metric for the capabilities of artifical intelligence. Many computer Go players have been developed, and the University of Electro-Communications (UEC) in Japan has held annual cups that pit AI vs. AI in games of Go to determine the strongest computer player. A five-year agreement was made in 2012 to grant the AI victors of the UEC cup additional matches against highly ranked human Go professionals. These are called Densei-sen, or "electric Sage battles," made to test the AI's effectiveness against human opponents. The [*Crazy Stone* go engine], created by Rémi Coulom, beat Go Sensei Norimoto Yoda in the second Densei-sen competition at the UEC. However, *Crazy Stone* was granted an extremely generous handicap of a four-stone advantage at the start. Many other computer Go players exist, including ones in development by AI giants like [Facebook] and [Google DeepMind], but none have beaten a [professionally ranked] human player without a handicap. The next UEC cup is in March 2016 and [many prominent AI teams have already registered], including *Crazy Stone* and Facebook AI's own *darkforest*. Additionally, Google's Demis Hassabis has [implied] a new breakthrough in Go artificial intelligence. With Computer Go getting more and more powerful, an AI player beating a Go master is a real possibility.

Fully autonomous self-driving cars by 2018?

no

Self-driving cars (SDC) are [anticipated] to become increasingly integrated into the driving population in the coming years; greatly reducing accident rates, giving driving independence to the impaired, and reducing fuel consumption are a few major benefits (see more [here] and [here.]) [Google] and [Tesla] in the U.S. and [Baidu] in China lead the race to bring their SDC technology to market, and other companies like [Nissan] and [Mobileye] are also invested in autonomous vehicle technology. Tesla's Elon Musk marked 2018 as the due date for fully autonomous Tesla vehicles in a [recent interview]. Meanwhile, Google does have autonomous SDC prototypes being live tested in [cities]. Still, economic and [regulatory] obstacles have to be overcome.

Will the VIX Index print above 50 in 2016?

no

Will the US restore funding for research that creates more dangerous versions of Influenza, MERS and SARS?

no

Low-mass Doppler-detected planet in 2016?

no

Will the California drought ease significantly this Winter?

no

[Tutorial:] Will a magnitude 6.0+ Earthquake hit California this year?

no

by 2021, will SLAC complete an "accelerator-on-a-chip" prototype with an acceleration gradient of 1 GeV/meter?

no

Will radical new "low-energy nuclear reaction" technologies prove effective before 2019?

no

Will EVE Online die by 2020?

no

Will a successful proof of concept for a hyperloop be demonstrated by mid-2017?

no

Has North Korea tested a boosted fission nuclear device?

no

Will an attack on the electrical grid cause an extended power outage for a major U.S. city?

no

Will an AI successfully masquerade as human for 20 questions by 2017?

no

Will the advanced LIGO team announce the discovery of gravitational waves by end of March?

yes

Will Uber drivers win a class-action lawsuit to define them as employees?

no

Will "Planet Nine" be discovered in 2016?

no

Will a consensus explanation of the strange behavior of the star KIC 8462852 emerge this year?

no

Will Google's AlphaGo beat Go player Lee Sedol in March 2016?

yes

The game of Go originated in China more than 2,500 years ago. While similar to chess in many ways, Go is much more minimalist in its ruleset and more esoteric in strategy. The aspect of pattern recognition and the huge state space of possible moves in Go (vastly greater than chess) make it an excellent metric for the capabilities of artifical intelligence. Whereas [DeepBlue defeated chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov] in 1997, it has taken 20 years for computer Go systems to become competitive with top human players. Recently, dramatic advances in ["deep learning"] AI systems have led to the development of much more competitive Go software. In a [previous question] we asked if a computer Go system would defeat a professional player in 2016. In this question the stakes go up. Google's [DeepMind] recently [announced] that their Go-playing program [AlphaGo] defeated European Go champion Fan Hui in a closed-door game, and will be playing against the reigning Go world champion, Lee Sedol, in a five-game match in March. **Will AlphaGo win?**

Can quantum gravity be interestingly constrained using tabletop experiments?

no

Will 2016 be the warmest year on record?

yes

Will Mochizuki's proof of the "abc conjecture" be formally accepted by the mathematics community by the end of 2017?

no

Will the Brain Preservation Foundation's Large Mammal preservation prize be won by Feb 9th, 2017?

no

The Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE to be awarded to a team in 2017?

yes

Will Theranos get more than 100 FDA approvals for blood tests by the end of 2018?

no

Wil the VIX index top 30 before March 15th, 2016?

yes

Will there be more novel new drugs approved by the FDA in 2016 than in 2015?

no

Will AirBnB will go public before 2019?

no

Will Facebook flight-test the Aquila drone in the U.S early this year?

no

Will the WHO classify aging as a disease by 2018?

no

In 2016, will gravitational wave astronomy discover something completely new?

no

Will Apple help the FBI access the 'San Bernardino iPhone'?

no

Does Proxima have Planets?

yes

Will the nuclear triad be modernized with mobile or exotically-based ICBMs?

no

Will the (theoretical) existence of "dark matter hair" change the way we look for dark matter?

no

Will a prediction market outperform Nate Silver's forecasts for the Super Tuesday primaries?

yes

Will over 70% of internet traffic be encrypted by 2017?

no

Will SpaceX's next attempt to land a Falcon 9 rocket on a barge be successful?

no

Will a full prototype car be unveiled at the Tesla Model 3 event on March 31?

yes

Will the US develop a new satellite for early-warning of severe geomagnetic storms?

yes

Will a record-setting brown dwarf be discovered by the end of 2017?

no

Will Lee Sedol defeat AlphaGo in any of the three games remaining?

yes

Will online voting spread in the US before the next presidential election?

no

By 2017, will research definitively show Zika virus to be the direct cause of microencephaly in developing humans?

yes

Ambulance chasing the LHC diphoton resonance

no

Will a non-test nuclear weapon be detonated by 2020?

no

Will a Self-Driving Car be available for ride service by the end of 2018?

no

This is a sister question to the [other Metaculus Self-Driving Car question], which asked if a commercially available car would be released by 2018. This one will ask if an autonomous vehicle fleet will be in operation for ride sharing, taxi, or shuttling services. Self-driving car (SDC) fleets are seen as perfect for rideshare business models like those of Lyft or Uber, who have effort in moving toward autonomous technology. This focus on rideshare became more apparent when [GM invested] $500M in autonomous vehicle fleet for Lyft, and the other dominant figures in autonomous vehicle tech like [Google], [Tesla], and [Ford] are developing fleets of their own with speculated intent for ridesharing. Like the sister question, technological maturity, regulation, cost, public policy, and safety are the primary obstacles in bringing fully autonomous vehicles to market.

Will Polarized 3D vision tech be used on self-driving cars by 2019?

no

By 2020, will an implanted human embryo with artificially edited DNA be brought to term?

yes

Will robotic/AI automation be essentially ignored in the primary races?

yes

Dramatic recent progress in narrow (and arguably general) purpose AI has led to a myriad of practical but nascent technologies including autonomous vehicles, automated call-answering systems, highly automated factories, medical and legal expert systems, and so on. While the automation of repetitive physical labor is an old story, the advent of AI/robotic systems to perform essentially any repetitive physical labor, as well as many non-repetitive physical tasks *and also* repetitive or non-repetitive *cognitive* tasks, is likely to dramatically change the dynamics governing human labor and its place in the global economy. In [their book](http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-Technologies/dp/0393239357), Brynjolfsson & McAfee argue that we are in the early stages of this process, but that it is already underway and has contributed significantly to income inequality and other difficulties in the labor pool. It is thus quite possible that the cause of much of the anger and frustration being channeled by the Trump and Sanders campaigns is fundamentally caused by an automation process that is likely just getting started. However, while a significant topic of conversation in tech and some economic circles, and while politicians *love* to talk about jobs, the automation of labor has played little to no role in the presidential election thus far. Will this continue to be the case?

Will Planet Nine be found in 2016?

no

Will this question resolve in the negative?

yes

Will the FDA approve GMO mosquitos for widespread release?

no

Will NASA's InSight Mars Mission Launch in 2018?

yes

Will the London housing market deflate in 2017?

no

Will a fatality of one or more per year due to accidental infections in "select agent" pathogen research labs be reported in the next year?

no

Will SpaceX's next attempt to land a Falcon 9 rocket on a barge be successful?

yes

Will the next Ebola outbreak kill less than 1,000 people?

yes

A medical pathway to complete painlessness?

no

How many Tesla Model 3 orders in 2016?

yes

Will Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable habitation module inflate, attach to the ISS, and be inhabitable?

yes

Will the Xenon1T experiment discover WIMP dark matter?

no

Will more than 80% of the new US electricity Generation Capacity in 2016 come from solar and wind?

no

A triumph over the mite-y?

no

A is in the I of the beholder #1: Wait, is this video for real?

no

Will Wikileaks publish the full "Panama Papers" in a publicly-accessible and searchable format?

no

A is in the I of the beholder #2: Wow this AI is very realistic

no

A is in the I of the beholder #3: it's beAIutiful!

no

To the stars! #1: Will the private investment in laser-sail extra-solar travel be matched by a comparable amount within 5 years?

no

To the stars! #3: Will a first test of a high-power phased array laser system occur by 2018?

no

To the stars! #2: Mountaintop lasers, rockets, optics and wafers? Or something else?

no