Ing-wen won re-election as president of Taiwan. And Sir Keir Starmer, whom we tipped
as “a dark horse to watch” in the aftermath of Britain’s general election, became leader
of the country's opposition Labour Party after its defeat.
Some predictions relating to the online world also stood up well, as people and activities
retreated into the digital sphere. “Fortnite”, a popular video-game which we pointed to
as the nearest thing to the virtual worlds depicted in science fiction, played host to a
concert in April by Travis Scott, an American hip-hop artist, that some observers called
the live-music event of this unusual year. We also pointed out that “American politicians
are just starting to notice” the popularity of TikTok, a Chinese video app, among
American teenagers. TikTok ended up embroiled in a row between the superpowers, in
line with our prediction that more Chinese tech firms, beyond Huawei, would find
themselves caught up in such fights.
Mostly, however, we got things wrong. In a further blow to our forecasters’ pride, GPT-
2 —a program developed by OpenAI, an artificial-intelligence startup—got a number of
things right. Our “interview” with it was not meant to be taken seriously. But its
predictions that “we are going to have a lot of turbulence in the world economy”, of
“major changes in China” and that Donald Trump “will be defeated in the general
election” turned out to be spot on.
Futurists love to talk about how machines will take everyone’s jobs. Despite decades of
such predictions, it has yet to happen. Perhaps the jobs they should be worried about
are their own. For us, and for other future-gazers, 2020 was a chastening experience. So
should you expect to see more humility among prognosticators in 2021? Don’t bet on it.
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