As 2023 draws to a close, it is time to look back upon the year, compare what we expected would happen with what actually did happen, and bestow the coveted GlutenFree Award–named after BernankeIsGlutenFree, the reader who predicted COVID–for the best prediction of the year.
So I reviewed Your Predictions for 2023 from December 28, 2022. As you may have noticed, we’ve been having trouble with the commenting software Disqus at this blog, and though much of that has been solved, comments from over one year ago are still not showing up. They are still preserved for ever, though, at the Disqus site, and with great effort I was able to find the ones for that post. I regret, though, that you won’t be able to check them for yourself, at least not yet.
Let’s do the predictions for 2024 on Tuesday, January 2, in another free post. That will give us another day to make sure the comments are working, one in which most of our tech people will be back on the job. Also it allows me to take advantage of the holidays falling on Monday to post a “New Year’s Miscellany” to go along with the Christmas Miscellany. (Some call it obsessive compulsive. I call it, with Wallace Stevens, “a blessed rage for order.”)
What Was Not Predicted
The Year of Our Lord 2023 was an eventful year, but those events were hard to predict. No one here saw coming anything like the Hamas attack on Israel on October 6, much less what happened next, not only with the war in Gaza but with the unraveling of woke progressivism in overt anti-semitism and the discrediting of our elite universities for being fine with that. That, to me, was the year’s biggest and most consequential story.
A number of you predicted correctly that the Russia/Ukraine war would drag on, which it has. None of you predicted an out-and-out Ukrainian victory, which many had thought possible early last year. Putin did not go nuclear, as he threatened to and as I predicted. (Usually, my predictions are over-optimistic. This time I made them over-pessimistic. I am usually wrong either way, for which I am especially glad this year.
Interestingly, no one predicted that Donald Trump and Joe Biden would be running against each other at this point in time for president. There were some different reasons given for why both would drop out of the race. But no one had an inkling that both candidates would be dominating their party’s nominating process as they are, despite everything that would seem to be working against them. Of course, we’ve just been in the preliminaries, with the actual race for the nomination starting with the Iowa Caucus on January 15. This next year, 2024, is the Election Year, and lots of surprises are no doubt in store. (Make your election predictions on the Tuesday post, to be entitled Your Predictions for 2024.)
One thing that surprised me about this year’s predictions, in such contrast to those of all the previous years we’ve done this, is the virtual disappearance of sports! The only sports-related prediction was from reg, who said, “Celtics and Bruins win NBA and NHL championships in same year.” That didn’t happen in 2023, but reg may want to repeat that prediction on Tuesday, since both teams are looking really good this season.
But other years had lots of sports predictions, full of rah-rah hopes for collegiate teams (“This is the year Florida State will win the national championship!”), the NFL, the NBA, the NHS, and major league baseball. Can it be that our enthusiasm for spectator sports is waning? College sports have certainly had a low point in 2023, what with the transfer portal, big money to teenagers for Name-Image-and-Likeness deals, the dissolution of conferences, and outrages such as keeping Florida State out of the championship playoffs despite their undefeated season. And professional sports have become such a matter of high finance that while they retain their entertainment value as a source of celebrities (“Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce!”), we aren’t as invested in them as we used to be. Is that it, or have sports just become too unpredictable?
The Worst Predictions
First, we give our imaginary prize for the worst predictions. That dishonor goes to ChatGPT! That’s right, the natural-language machine learning Artificial Intelligence chatbot made the worst predictions for 2023.
Last year’s runner-up, skyorrichegg, had the brilliant idea–for which we bestow upon him the Distinguished Service Award–of asking ChatGPT to join our game. He asked,”What are ten unusual and specific predictions about the year 2023? Include some geopolitical predictions.” Here are the results:
- Space tourism will become commonplace, with multiple companies offering trips to orbit around the earth. [Already, in 2023?]
2. Autonomous cars will become the new normal and many countries will have laws allowing self-driving cars on the road. [Already, in 2023?]
3. The world will witness the emergence of a new super-power as China’s economy overtakes the United States to become the largest in the world. [Not even close: #1 USA’s GDP was 26,954 billion; #2 China (in a state of economic decline) was a very distant 17,786b.]
4. India will become a major technological and economic powerhouse, overtaking Japan to become the third largest economy in the world. [India is #5 at 3,730 billion, behind both Germany at #3 (4,430b) and Japan at #4 (4,231b).]
5. The world will move towards a cashless society as digital currencies become more prevalent. [2023 was the year of Sam Bankman-Fried’s incarceration.]
6. The use of facial recognition technology will become widespread, with many public spaces using it for security and access control. [Pretty obvious. Too bad ChatGPT doesn’t have a face.]
7. The United States and China will be in a state of Cold War-style competition, as both countries vie for power and influence in the world. [Obvious]
8. Renewable energy sources will become the dominant form of energy production, with many countries phasing out the use of fossil fuels. (Already, in 2023?)
9. Virtual reality will become a mainstream technology, with many applications in entertainment, education, and work. (2023 being the year the Metaverse bogged down.)
10. The world will experience a major breakthrough in artificial intelligence, with machines becoming increasingly sophisticated and capable of performing complex calculations and interactions. [Self-serving]
Evidently, ChatGPT has trouble understanding the different horizons of the future, with an Artificial Intelligence oriented to vagueness. So skyorrichegg asked again, in an effort to get some specifics. He asked, “Give me ten black swan events for the year 2023, these predictions should be things that are not that predictable ahead of time.” A black swan event, by definition, is not something that can be predicted, as ChatGPT should have known, but here are the new predictions
- A major technological breakthrough leads to widespread use of artificial intelligence.
2. The United States withdraws from NATO and the United Nations.
3. The discovery of a new species of animal in the Amazon rainforest.
4. A new and highly contagious virus spreads across the world.
5. A new energy source is discovered and becomes widely available.
6. International tensions between China and the US escalate leading to military conflict.
7. The world’s first human mission to Mars successfully lands.
8. An asteroid collides with Earth, causing widespread destruction.
9. A major cyber-attack causes disruption to the global financial system.
10. A new nation is formed in the Middle East.
All of you did better than this!
The Winner
The winner of the 2023 GlutenFree Prize (which has no monetary value, no physical existence, no virtual existence, and consists solely of this blog’s honor and acclaim) goes to ADP for a series of highly-detailed predictions:
(1) “Minnesota will codify abortion as a right, nullifying the modest protections we had in the law such as parental notification for minors, a 24-hour waiting period, etc. Which are suspended anyway due to an activist lawsuit.” [Yes, as of the passing in the Minnesota state legislature in January 2023 of the Protect Reproductive Options Act, Minnesota–despite its high number of Lutherans, Catholics, and its reputation for niceness–now is so brutal as to have no limits at all.]
(2) “Musk will announce a new Twitter CEO at the end of Q1. Twitter will continue struggling financially all year but will not declare bankruptcy.” [Elon Musk announced that the new CEO of Twitter, renamed X, is Linda Yaccarino. This was on May 12 . May is in the second quarter (4/01-6/30), not the end of the first quarter (1/1-3/31), but that’s close.]
(3) “The price of food will rise farther than is currently predicted in the US – USDA says between 3.5 and 4.5 percent overall but I am going to predict almost double that – except the price of eggs, which will fall but remain about 20% higher than before this avian flu mess (Approximately $1.64 on average nationwide in July 2021).”
[According to the USDA, “In 2023, all food prices are predicted to increase 5.8 percent, with a prediction interval of 5.7 to 5.9 percent. Food-at-home prices are predicted to increase 5.0 percent, with a prediction interval of 4.9 to 5.1 percent. Food-away-from-home prices are predicted to increase 7.1 percent, with a prediction interval of 7.0 to 7.2 percent.” So food prices did rise more than predicted, as ADP says, not 3.5-4.5% but 5.8%. That’s not double, though the price of food eaten away from home increase to 7.1%, which is double the USDA’s earlier prediction for food overall.
As far as the price of eggs, the average price today is $2.14 per dozen, down from the peak price of $4.82 in January. ADP predicted that eggs would remain about 20% higher than before, but the price is actually 30% higher.]
So congratulate ADP on some impressively accurate and precise predictions. (If you know ADP, pass the word. This is a free post, so even non-subscribers are welcome.)
ADP, tell us your secrets of how you figured out this stuff.
And remember, everybody, subscribers or not, come back with your predictions for 2024 on Tuesday, January 2, and we’ll start the cycle over again!
Photo by RDNE Stock project: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-man-s-face-of-victory-holding-his-trophy-7005500/
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