Can Artificial Intelligence Predict The Future?

Updated: October 11, 2022
by Psychic Source

Massive new AI models like Dall-E 2, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and GPT3 are emerging as disruptive new tools for creativity, art, and exploration of the human condition. Trained on billions of words and images, models like Dalle-E 2 or Midjourney can generate images of nearly any style, depicting almost anything imaginable based on a simple text description.

When a model has been trained on what is essentially The Entire Internet, it isn’t hyperbole to say their outputs represent a type of hivemind, or an amalgamation of the near totality of human knowledge.

Given the breadth of training data, could these models have picked up on subtleties that might give them prognosticating powers we might not expect? Could today’s AI have some of the same advantages as say Swarm Surveys (A hivemind model for interactive predicting that shows surprising efficacy)?

Recent news has shown that future prediction with AI is feasible. In fact, much of the impetus for the development of AI is to help humans be as predictive as possible about the future. From stock trends to economic modeling and self-driving cars, guessing correctly what may happen next provides immense value.

While it might be difficult to prove that current AI displays psychic abilities, it is fascinating to test the ways it attempts to model the future. Furthermore, it may be through AI research that we get a better understanding of the psychic and future predicting powers of humans. After all, as Arthur C. Clarke famously said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

To explore this topic, we’re asking Dalle-E 2 and Midjourney, the two most powerful text-to-image AI’s, to predict the future. Not just any future, but our political future, by making predictions on future American Leaders. Here is what they had to say:

Our Political Future, According to State of the Art AI

The following images were generated with Dalle-E 2 and Midjourney. Prompts used to generate the images are given below each image. The generated images were selected from the prompt without reruns or cherry picking. The first image is from Midjourney, the second from Dalle-E 2 in each set.

Who Does AI Think Will Influence the World the Most?

Switching gears slightly, we asked Midjourney and Dall-E 2 to give us some additional predictions. This time not of politicians specifically, but of individual people who will make an outsized impact – people who will single handedly impact the world on a large scale. To get at this prediction, we used prompts asking for “Time's Person of the Year” photos for a number of years. The modifier “Photo by Martin Schoeller” improved the image generation because Schoeller’s style is close up face portraits, allowing us to narrow the stylistic focus.

Should I put any Stock in these Predictions?

Absolutely not. This was an exploration done just for fun. There’s no reason to believe any modern AI has predictive powers of this type, or that predicting things like this is even possible in practice. What it can tell us, however, is about the biases that exist within the models. Take for example the prevalence of elderly white males just in this small experiment. Or the grotesque appearance of the presumably black figures, the AI-powered digital blackface equivalent of minstrel shows. Gender and in particular, racial biases in the data are magnified, offering illuminating glimpses into disturbing truths about public perceptions and practices.

Methodology

The images above were generated using Midjourney and Dalle2. Experimentation was done to find appropriate text prompts, but once the prompt was dialed in to return photorealistic-ish faces, each image is the first rendering from either model, and not cherry picked.