Hybrid forecasting of geopolitical events†
Abstract
Sound decision‐making relies on accurate prediction for tangible outcomes ranging from military conflict to disease outbreaks. To improve crowdsourced forecasting accuracy, we developed SAGE, a hybrid forecasting system that combines human and machine generated forecasts. The system provides a platform where users can interact with machine models and thus anchor their judgments on an objective benchmark. The system also aggregates human and machine forecasts weighting both for propinquity and based on assessed skill while adjusting for overconfidence. We present results from the Hybrid Forecasting Competition (HFC)—larger than comparable forecasting tournaments—including 1085 users forecasting 398 real‐world forecasting problems over 8 months. Our main result is that the hybrid system generated more accurate forecasts compared to a human‐only baseline, which had no machine generated predictions. We found that skilled forecasters who had access to machine‐generated forecasts outperformed those who only viewed historical data. We also demonstrated the inclusion of machine‐generated forecasts in our aggregation algorithms improved performance, both in terms of accuracy and scalability. This suggests that hybrid forecasting systems, which potentially require fewer human resources, can be a viable approach for maintaining a competitive level of accuracy over a larger number of forecasting questions.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2023
- Source ID
- 10.1002/aaai.12085
Entities
People
- Akira Matsui
- Ali E. Abbas
- Amandeep Singh
- Andreas Beger
- Andrés Abeliuk
- Aram Galstyan
- Daniel M. Benjamin
- David V. Budescu
- Emilio Ferrara
- Fred Morstatter
- Gleb Satyukov
- Jure Leskovec
- Ksm Tozammel Hossain
- Lucas Haravitch
- Mark Himmelstein
- Mark Steyvers
- Mehrnoosh Mirtaheri
- Michael D. Ward
- Michele Catasta
- Pavel Atanasov
- Pedro A Szekely
- Rajiv Sethi
- Regina Joseph
- Rok Sosič
- Saurabh Birari
- Stephen Bennett
- Woojeong Jin
- Xiang Ren
- Yuzhong Huang
Organizations
- Columbia University
- Fordham University
- Information Sciences Institute
- Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity
- Nova Southeastern University
- Stanford University
- University of California, Irvine
- University of Chile
- University of Southern California