[ExI] Google’s Go Victory Is Just a Glimpse of How Powerful AI Will Be

[Robin D Hanson]

On Feb 2, 2016, at 1:48 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> Your name is being taken in vain (but in a good way; people aren't yet going around exclaiming Robin-dammit or anything.)
> 
> That whole notion of ideas futures which you drove a long time ago is really big stuff in political elections, like the one which was kicked off yesterday in Iowa.  I watched those share prices do what they do in elections.  A prominent real-money version is PredictIt.
> 
> https://www.predictit.org/
> 
> The PredictIt people realized that the most this whole notion is ever used is around politics.  
> 
> Most entertaining thing I have seen in a long Hanson-damn time.

I can’t at all take credit for people betting for fun on elections. Turns out a bit over a century ago more was bet on US presidential elections than in the US stock market. 

I can take more credit for pushing the idea that if you want to know something you should subsidize betting markets in those topics. For elections this might be markets on the consequences of a certain person or party being elected to a particular office. Alas I haven’t had much success on that front. Seems people have very little interest in finding out which candidates will actually produce better outcomes. 

Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu 
Future of Humanity Inst., Oxford University
Assoc. Prof. Economics, George Mason University
See my new book: http://ageofem.com