The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 3,504 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 448 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Sam Altman: Frontier AI will eventually pose significant global harm risks
“I think there will come a time in the not super distant future, like, you know, we're not talking like decades and decades from now, where AI says the frontier AI systems are capable of causing significant Global harm.”
Sacks predicts second Biden term will force Elon Musk to divest X
“So I think that in a second Biden term, they will open an investigation and just start ratcheting up the pressure on Elon to get rid of X, because that's clearly what they want.”
Sacks: Israel's war in Gaza is on track to be its Vietnam
“These protesters, their actions are gonna be judged in the fullness of time. I think there are actually good reasons to believe that Israel's war in Gaza, it's shades of Vietnam, and I think that over the long term, people may regard these protesters in a diff…”
Chamath predicts AI foundational models will become free with zero economic value
“I think foundational models will have no economic value. I think that they will be an incredibly powerful part of the substrate and they will be broadly available and entirely free.”
Sacks predicts Vladimir Putin will be 2024's biggest political winner
“My prediction for biggest political winner in twenty-twenty-four is Vladimir Putin.”
Mumgaard: CFS expects net energy fusion gain by early 2026
“And we'll start to assemble that machine later this year. And turn it on in this sort of, twenty-twenty-five time frame and get to Q greater than one, more power out than N for the first time probably early twenty-twenty-six.”
Musk: China will likely use military force to incorporate Taiwan
“If one is to take China's policy literally, and probably one should then there will be some forceful force will be used for, you know to incorporate Taiwan into China.”
Gerstner: 100% of 2021's thousand unicorns will face down rounds
“Remember we had a thousand unicorns at the end of 2021. And I've said a hundred percent of those are going to do a down round. And we're still in the early stages of that reset to occur.”
Calacanis: Trump will attempt to overturn the government again if given the chance
“Guy has no morality, and he would have overturned the government if he had the chance. And he will do it again.”
Chamath: 60% of unicorns will go to zero, yielding 1.1x overall return
“I think 60% go to zero. Of the remaining 40%, half of them probably return money. And then of the remaining half, half of those maybe get one and a half X. And then you get a geometric distribution from there, which means the blended return of that entire stre…”
Calacanis: Microsoft will release an OpenAI search engine impacting Google
“Microsoft, I think is going to release a and there's a prediction as well, a search engine with Open AI, that has a significant impact on Google's franchise.”
Chamath: $600B to $700B of tech VC capital will be destroyed
“About five hundred billion dollars of that trillion from 1819, 20, 21 and 22 is going to be destroyed. We haven't even started to see that yet, right? And then if you factor in another hundred billion or so from older vintages, we're talking about a 600 or 700…”
Palihapitiya predicts up to $750B in venture capital value destruction
“Over these next 10 years, when maybe you have 500 to three quarters of a trillion dollars of value destruction, And it's because you didn't think about portfolio construction properly.”
Sacks: Russia will likely use a tactical nuke if Ukraine retakes Crimea
“With the result that I think is quite likely that the Russians will be willing to use a tactical nuke to prevent their total defeat.”
Goldstein: Supreme Court conservative majority will likely vote 5-4 to overturn Roe
“Till June of this year, where they will likely win five to four.”
Sacks: Biden FTC would allow Big Tech to buy Twitter over Musk
“I think this administration does not want to see Twitter become a free speech company again. And so the political winds will blow towards letting, I think, Twitter be acquired by a big tech company, even if it means big tech gets bigger. Wait a second. So I th…”
Sacks predicts elites and media will stop Musk from acquiring Twitter
“Elon is gonna be thwarted by these folks. He's not gonna get control of this company. They're, the vested interest in stopping him by the board, by the new CEO, and by the corporate media and the political elites is too great. They will find a way to stop him.”
Calacanis: Musk will buy Twitter at a lower price by year-end
“My prediction is the Board tries to fight it. Stock collapses. Nobody thinks it's going to get done. Elon lowers his offer, and he wins it by the end of the year, and gives him a lower offer.”
Friedberg: Reduced global crop production will lead to famine in a year
“That means there's going to be less production over the next year. That means famine hits us in a year.”
Friedberg: Russian export controls will almost certainly cause widespread famine in 2022
“That are not just about sanctions, but also about export controls by Russia that are creating swings in food markets like we've never seen, and will almost certainly lead to widespread famine by the end of this year at this point.”
Chamath predicts Big Tech will hit peak market cap by 2023
“I think that this is sort of peak big tech market cap is probably within the next year or two.”
Friedberg predicts humanity will ultimately view animal agriculture as worse than slavery
“I think one day the human race will look back and identify animal agriculture as worse than human slavery. I do think that that will be a profound realization over the next century for our species”
Chamath: The four major tech monopolies will be broken up by 2030
“And if I was a betting man, end of decade, these four monopolies will not exist.”
Sacks: Trump has disqualified himself from running for national office again
“I think he's disqualified himself from being a candidate, you know, at a national level again.”
Friedberg: US West Coast will reopen for business around April 7th or 8th
“New York is going to be fucked for a little while, but I do think that the west coast and with some travel restrictions is going to be able to reopen for business probably around April seventh or eighth, because we're going to see a dramatic decline at that po…”
Sacks predicts a federal AI agency will effectively ban open source
“I mean, no, look, this is a doomer psyop and the ultimate target is open source. That's what it all comes down to, because that is what An FDA AI will ultimately ban. They won't call it a ban. They'll just say, look, we have to apply the same standards to open…”
Friedberg: Recursive AI improvement will happen somewhere, creating an uncatchable lead
“The recursive self-improvement scenario will play out somewhere on planet Earth, and when that happens, when that person or that organization or that country now has that capacity, they have now a huge technological advantage, and then it becomes very hard to …”
Chamath: School AI bans will trap progressive city students in poverty
“And I think what it will do is it is a self-imposed form of modern segregation. And it is going to completely push an entire generation of kids in these cities that are subject to these rules into poverty, and it will keep them there. And so in as much, I thin…”
Calacanis: Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot will be the world's best-selling product
“Optimist will be the best selling. I think product.”
Friedberg: Social Security and state defaults will force bailouts by 2032
“Then the next big thing is going to happen around 2030 to 20 32. And that's really where social security doesn't have any money to pay anymore. And I think during that era is also when a lot of the states are going to become bankrupt. We're not going to be abl…”
Kratsios: US will return to Moon and deploy space reactor by 2028
“We're going to have American boots back on the moon in 28. We said we're going to have a nuclear reactor in space by 28. We're going to have the first elements of a moon base by twenty-thirty. These are like big, bold bets that take a decade to accomplish, and…”
Sacks: US will get smoked by China if AI faces pre-release regulation
“And yes, we will get smoked by China because they will not subject all their companies to these constraints.”
Sacks predicts an open-source AI ban disguised as uniform safety standards
“An open source ban is coming. They're not going to call it that. You know what they're going to say? They're going to say that we simply have to apply the same standards to open models that we apply to close.”
Friedberg: Recursive Self-Improvement in AI Is Likely to Happen Soon
“I happen to Believe, having looked at this and thought about it, I think that it is possible. I think it is likely to happen soon.”
Friedberg predicts an AOC-aligned democratic socialist will become US President
“I think someone like an AOC becomes president. I think there's going to be a wave this year, and then there's going to be a bigger push in 20, 28, because I don't see the arithmetic or the fiscal situation changing.”
Chamath: Society will scapegoat billionaires to reach catharsis before resetting
“The billionaires will be scapegoated and the trillionaires will be, I mean, even worse. And because that will allow the catharsis that will allow society to reset and realize, wait a minute.”
Sacks: New AI data center scaling will rely entirely on natural gas
“The green stuff can't scale in the short term. It's all gas powered for the new data centers. That's the only way to kind of get the amount of scale that you need in the next year or two.”
Baker: Banning open-source AI means losing the AI race to China
“If we ban open source, if we let this control be centralized, we will lose AI, we will lose geopolitics, we will lose everything to China. It's just that Simple.”
Chamath: Solar will dominate power generation before nuclear SMRs reach production
“By the time, like any of these SMRs actually get near production, the TCO of solar will be like, 10 or 12 dollars per megawatt hour, and it will be 80% of all the power generation.”
Chamath: Global solar will make China's 2030 nuclear fusion reactor irrelevant
“That reactor won't even get turned on until 2030. The entire world will be covered by solar by then, so it won't matter.”
Calacanis: Major enterprise customers will abandon OpenAI and Anthropic for open-source
“And I'll make this prediction here, that you're going to see some of the major customers Of Anthropic and major customers of OpenAI. I'm talking about the eight and nine figure customers, people spending fifty million, a hundred million a year. They're leaving…”
Friedberg: Converting copyrighted data into AI knowledge will be upheld as fair use
“I do think fundamentally that the conversion of that data into what I would call knowledge and ultimately the ability to create new outcomes from that knowledge that are not copyrighted, that are not copies of the original material, I do think is going to end …”
Sacks: AI safety rhetoric is leading toward a push to ban open-source models
“I think where it's all leading to is an effort to ban open source models.”
Chamath: Intervening against open-source AI will tank the US stock market
“Now, there's another important thing here, which is if the United States government intervenes, it will tank the stock market.”
Sacks: OpenAI forecasts $75 billion in exit ARR by year-end
“I think they were expecting to end the year at sixty billion of ARR. And I think they're forecasting more like seventy five billion of exit ARR.”
Calacanis: Margin compression will derail OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs
“I believe that this is going to derail their IPOs. I'm taking it from the top. It's going to derail their IPOs. It's going to be headwinds against it because I think that they're going to have massive margin compression.”
Friedberg: Courts won't rule AI processing digital knowledge as copyright infringement
“Knowledge can't be contained. It's diffuse. And so the form of copyright is very clear. The case law and copyright is very clear. I cannot lift text out of your book, reprint it, and claim it as my own. That is a violation of copyright. But my reading of your …”