A public record of predictions made by well-known people: their exact words, when they said them, and how things turned out.
| Person | Category | Predictions | Scored | Accurate | Late | Partial | Wrong | Accuracy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthony Fauci | Scientist | 16 | 14 | 10 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 82% |
| Demis Hassabis | AI researcher | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — |
| Geoffrey Hinton | AI researcher | 11 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0% |
| James Hansen | Scientist | 17 | 10 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 90% |
| Michio Kaku | Scientist | 13 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 30% |
| Paul Ehrlich | Scientist | 13 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 10 | 5% |
| Stephen Hawking | Scientist | 7 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 33% |
| Yann LeCun | AI researcher | 7 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0% |
Accuracy counts accurate as 1, late or partial as ½, inaccurate as 0. Pending predictions don't count.
“We find that the principal drive for global warming acceleration began in about 2015, which implies that 2°C global warming is likely to be reached in the 2030s, not at midcentury.”Climate
“We are going to have AI systems that have humanlike and human-level intelligence, but they’re not going to be built on LLMs, and it’s not going to happen next year or two years from now.”AI
“We project a global temperature record of +1.7°C in 2027”Climate
“The 12-month running-mean temperature should decline for the next few months, reaching a minimum about +1.4°C.”Climate
“It's going to create massive unemployment and a huge rise in profits.”EconomyAI
“And fusion I think is definitely doable, it seems, if we have the right design of reactor and we can control the plasma and fast enough and so on, and I think both of those things will actually get solved. So we'll probably have at least those are probably the two primary source…”EnergyClimate
“New types of solar material, solar panel material room temperature superconductors has always been on my list of dream breakthroughs, and optimal batteries. And I think a solution to any one of those things would be absolutely revolutionary for climate and energy usage. And we'r…”AIEnergyClimate
“Someone like a legal assistant or paralegal — they're not going to be needed for very long.”EconomyAI
“My guess is between 10 and 20 years we'll have superintelligence”AI
“And I think for mundane intellectual labor, AI is just going to replace everybody.”EconomyAI
“And they're about comparable with the experts by now. They'll soon be considerably better because they'll have had a lot more experience.”HealthAI
“But over the next 10 years, I wouldn't be at all surprised if there was a cyber attack that took down a Canadian bank.”BankingTechnology
“there's a good chance it'll be here in 10 years or less now.”AI
“In the next five to ten years, I think.”AI
“I also think another big area will be robotics. I think it will have a breakthrough moment in the next couple of years where we'll have demonstrations of maybe humanoid robots or other types of robots that can start really doing useful things.”TechnologyAI
“I think actually in the next maybe five to ten years. I think we'll have systems that are capable of not only solving an important problem or conjecture in science but coming up with it in the first place.”AI
“global temperature will remain above +1.5 °C at the end of 2024 and, at most, barely fall below +1.5 °C in 2025.”Climate
“global warming in the next two decades is likely to be about 0.2-0.3 °C per decade, leading to global temperature +2 °C by 2045.”Climate
“shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is likely within the next 20-30 years, unless actions are taken to reduce global warming”Climate
“I think within five years, nobody in their right mind would use them anymore,”AI
“I think we're probably three to five years away.”AI
“it will enable us to create highly intelligent and knowledgeable assistants who will increase productivity in almost all industries.”AIEconomy
“But it's not going to happen next year. It's not going to happen in two years,”AI
“So the direction of inevitable direction of history is that the vast majority of AI systems will be built on top of open source platforms.”AI
“all of this is going to take at least a decade and probably much more”AI
“the legislation will not happen in the U.S. because one of the major political parties has tied its fate to the successful propagation of fake news.”PoliticsAI
“So I'd say within five years we're going to start to reach quantum computers that are competitive with standard digital computers on select problems”Technology
“global warming will exceed 1.5°C in the 2020s”Climate
“under the present geopolitical approach to GHG emissions, global warming will exceed 1.5°C in the 2020s and 2°C before 2050.”Climate
“I now predict 5 to 20 years but without much confidence.”AI