I have an exciting (remote) opportunity to share with you all. I was recently asked to join the Foretell Ambassador Board at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technologies (CSET), a think-tank focused on the technology policy-security nexus. CSET created this strategic advisory board to help execute CSET Foretell, a crowdsourced forecasting project to generate predictions on future trends in emerging technology and AI for policymakers. My particular focus is around the impact of AI and AI policy on higher education, the workforce, and university R&D.
To maximize the positive benefits of AI while minimizing the privacy and security threats, CSET's Foretell program has piloted a new innovative strategy to help our policymakers make better choices about tech policy.
Georgetown University is home to world experts and researchers in technology policy (like Jason Matheny or Dewey Murdick), but to improve the accuracy of the policy prediction, CSET Foretell is turning to people like you, me, and other "forecasters" to crowdsource predictions about tech-security policy topics like AI regulations, Chinese-U.S. tech trade relations, and, yes, even the security and privacy concerns associated with TikTok. Studies have shown that non-expert forecasters can predict decision making just as well, if not better, than established experts. In a way, CSET is trying to democratize policy advising! Learn more.
As a Foretell board member, I’d like to invite you to be on my team of forecasters. You don’t need to be an expert. You just need to contribute 1-2 hours a month of your time for the next four months and be a somewhat knowledgeable follower of tech or tech policy news and have an interest in learning about AI policy and security. You could be a student, an academic, a journalist, a tech professional, or simply a fan of tech. Here’s what I’m asking each member of the forecasting team to do:
Make forecasts and provide rationales - on topics related to the technology-security landscape on a weekly or monthly basis. Georgetown’s CSET experts will provide curated data, chart, and news clips for us to read. Then, we just cast our predictions online. For example, Will either China or the United States withdraw from their January 2020 trade truce by August 31, 2020? Yes or no?
Share helpful information or news about relevant topics with the team or everyone on the site - this is especially important to keep all forecasts timely so that outputs can be used in the analysis for policymakers. If you come across articles, share them via comments on the online Foretell platform. You’ll be able to read comments from other forecasters as well.
Suggest additional forecast topics CSET should investigate - CSET has specifically asked for our outsider’s view on what else they should be focused on. They want to hear your voice!
Optional: Publish position papers - on AI policy and your predictions on CSET's blog (read by lots of people from industry and government, think-tanks, and universities).
As a Forecaster, you’ll be able to build your resume and use the title of "Foretell Forecaster at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology" on your resume/LinkedIn. To sweeten the pot, there are also cash prizes for teams to win for casting correct predictions, but no pressure. As your team lead, I'll track our engagement, send reminders, host occasional Zoom happy hours and live forecasting sessions, and create a WhatsApp group with the team to promote networking and idea exchange. It'll be a fun and rewarding experience! Again, you’ll need to carve out on average an hour or two per week for this role (more if you’d like to do things like publish your own position papers on the CSET blog!)
10/29/20 Update: I’m re-opening the application cycle - please sign-up here!