On June 22nd, Munk Debates will be hosting a debate between Max Tegmark and Yann LeCun on the following subject:
Be it resolved, AI research and development poses an existential threat.
Max is taking the "Pro" side and Yann is taking the "Con" side.
Munk Debates does a poll of the audience before and after each debate. The debaters are then judged based on how many people in the audience (on net) changed their minds from "Pro" to "Con" or vice-versa. You can see some examples from their previous debates on their debates page.
Note that this doesn't require a majority of the audience to agree with the winner! If the initial poll shows 10% Pro/90% Con, and the final poll shows 15% Pro/85% Con, then the "Pro" side is considered the winner since it had a 5% vote gain!
This market resolves "Yes" if Munk Debates pronounces Yann LeCun the winner for shifting the audience's net opinions further to the "Con" side. It resolves "No" in the case of a draw or if Max Tegmark is pronounced the winner.
This market will close at the currently-scheduled end of the debate (8:45 PM Eastern time), in case folks want to evaluate the arguments live and predict how they might sway the audience. This may mean that the results could be announced before this market fully closes, but I think that's an okay tradeoff.
This market will resolve sometime after the final results are announced, possibly with a delay to allow me the time to look up the results and resolve it. (I may not be able to watch it live.)
1,000
3.00I'll repost a quote in the comments on that page from 'Bao Lei':
"Opportunity squander with 90%+ audience ready to change their mind, and yet only a few of them actually did.
The four debated different things for 2 hours. Yann and Melanie were debating the threat of current AI. Yoshua and Max were debating the threat of future AI.
An informative debate should have addressed the difference in capability between current and future AI, and hence resolve the potential level of threat posed by AI and when the threat could realistically materialise."
This seems to be a problem for these types of debates, where neither side is willing to sustain engagement with the other side from their perspective, since their priorities differ in preventing present & near term harm vs. far-term harm. Each side claims the other is sucking all the attention from their perspective, when we should be able to do attend to both simultaneously.
I must have missed something, they added Melanie Mitchell and Yoshua Bengio to the debate? Did anyone know about this? If I had known Bengio was partcipating I would have sold some YES shares. Didn't expect them to add more debaters so didn't check for updates.
@parhizj yeah, they added both with very little notice. Tho Bengio wasn't stellar either, I actually I think Melanie was more persuasive during the debate
I wasn't able to watch the debate live, and so far it looks like Munk Debates hasn't announced the final results yet. I'm not sure when that'll happen.
If the results don't come in soon, would people prefer I extend the close date to, say, a week from now so that anyone catching up on the debate recordings can bet? This comes at the cost of likely allowing bets even after the results are announced, as it's likely that the bettors will be watching for the results closer than I am.
I think there is already information about the score available (especially to @agucova who watched it) and I saw on twitter some pictures that I believe showed the result:
Before?:
https://twitter.com/MichelleLyEaton/status/1672044367924609027
After?:
https://twitter.com/Hlhansen4/status/1672060901074018305
Looks like the difference became about +25% pro existential risk, so Yan lost, but these images might not be the official results.
@parhizj The second image (with the 92%-8% split) you linked wasn't the % in favor of Pro, but rather the % of people who indicated they were opening to changing their mind over the course of the debate.
I don't know what Max's full position is but it sounds like he is saying inner alignment might cause extinction, where as Yan says the risks of extinction are overblown. The Livestream of the debate has buy in of $25? I like Max but I don't know about his rhetoric and debate skills given the few times I've heard him talk; I did hear him talk on Democracy Now recently on this topic. I know Yan is very active on twitter but I've only heard him speak once and I think he's a better speaker. I think unfortunately Yan will be better at soothing existential fears than Max will be about being cautiously alarmist so I am betting on Yan.
@parhizj People might be more desperate to believe they're safe than acknowledge risks. Covid, climate change and many others have shown people don't want to believe in risks and are often happy to take excuses