About Metaculus Pro Forecasters

For certain projects Metaculus employs Pro Forecasters who have demonstrated excellent forecasting ability and who have a history of clearly describing their rationales. Pros forecast on private and public sets of questions to produce well-calibrated forecasts and descriptive rationales for our partners.

If you’re interested in hiring Metaculus Pro Forecasters for a project, contact us at support@metaculus.com with the subject "Project Inquiry".

Meet a few of our Pro Forecasters:

Peter Wildeford

Peter Wildeford is the co-founder and Chief Advisory Executive at the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy, a think tank dedicated to securing the benefits and managing the risks of advanced AI. He also co-founded Rethink Priorities, a research and implementation group identifying high-impact opportunities to improve the world. Prior to that, he was a data scientist in industry. Peter’s professional forecasting work focuses on artificial intelligence, nuclear risks, Ukraine, and supply chains.

Philipp Schoenegger

Philipp is a postdoctoral researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Previously, he was a research analyst at the Forecasting Research Institute and completed a PhD in philosophy and economics at the University of St Andrews. Philipp forecasts for Seldon Capital, the Social Science Prediction Platform, Swift Centre, and other organizations. At Metaculus, Philipp has focused on the future of humanity over the next 100 years, climate change and the future of electric vehicles, predicting the success of Focused Research Organization proposals, and the future of benchtop DNA synthesis.

Isabel Juniewicz

Isabel is a Research Fellow at Open Philanthropy, serving on the Cause Prioritization Team within the Global Catastrophic Risks focus area. She holds a master’s degree in economics from UCLA and was a Senior Research Assistant at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Isabel has contributed to several Metaculus Pro Forecasting projects, focusing on artificial intelligence, the conflict in Ukraine, and regional supply chains.

Scott Eastman

Scott is a geopolitical forecaster and analyst whose predictions have been used by senior political officials, leading financial institutions, and philanthropies. He has spoken at and led discussions at the National Military Academies of Poland and Romania, and he contributed to an epidemic forecasting initiative by the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, advising governments and industry on COVID-19. He currently advises on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and at Metaculus has focused on artificial intelligence, nuclear risks, synthetic biology, the seasonal respiratory disease outlook, and other topics.

The Metaculus community has demonstrated excellent accuracy and calibration on the questions it has forecasted. However, sometimes there are questions of particular importance – either to the world or to certain stakeholders – where excellent calibration and transparent reasoning are of the utmost importance. Pro Forecasters are selected from the most accurate Metaculus forecasters and describe their reasoning when making forecasts, providing enhanced confidence in the calibration of the predictions and ensuring that stakeholders can understand what is driving the forecasts.

Pro Forecasters are carefully selected from forecasters who have fulfilled certain criteria to ensure the quality of their predictions and reasoning.

Pro Forecasters must demonstrate excellent forecasting ability. This means not only that they have excellent accuracy, but also that they have a history of making insightful comments that clearly explain their reasoning. Accuracy alone is not enough, a Pro Forecaster must be able to both make accurate forecasts and explain the underlying reasoning behind those forecasts.

Our Pro selection methodology uses the Metaculus Leaderboards, combining the Peer Accuracy, Baseline Accuracy, and Comments leaderboards to produce a weighted average score across those leaderboards and across different leaderboard periods. Pros are selected from forecasters who have the highest score on this combined metric, representing the very best forecasters from all of Metaculus. Note that while the Peer score is weighted highest in this combined metric, the weighting is such that forecasters must have good scores in all categories.

Pro Forecasters must have at least 75 resolved questions and must have made predictions across multiple subject areas, with at least one year of experience making predictions.

We also consider recruiting forecasters who have demonstrated excellent forecasting ability elsewhere.

Our Pros work on projects for external partners who value clear reasoning to better interpret the forecasts. We select Pros who have a history of making clear and insightful comments, and who are willing to disagree with their peers, but in a polite and respectful manner.