niklaswenzin/africa-ai-forecasting

AI forecasts vs. prediction markets for African economic and political development # AI Forecasting: African Economic and Political Development Two language models — Claude and GPT — estimate the probability of open questions about African politics and economics. Their estimates are published next to the corresponding prediction-market price. Neither model ever sees that price, so the two numbers are independent. **Live dashboard: niklaswenzin.github.io The site is rebuilt from live data, so the numbers below will differ from whatever you see today. ## What it does Three scripts, run in order: | Script | Does | Writes | |---|---|---| | `fetch_markets.py` | Loads open questions from every configured source, keeps those with an African subject, drops sports questions, takes at most one question per country | `markets.json` | | `forecast.py` | One API call per question and per model, both with web search, returns validated JSON | `forecasts.json` | | `build_site.py` | Renders the static dashboard | `docs/index.html` | ```bash python fetch_markets.py && python forecast.py && python build_site.py ``` `forecast.py --nur-fehlende` only queries questions that have no forecast yet. Useful when a run is cut short — an exhausted API balance, a network failure — and the remainder should be filled in without paying for the finished ones again. `snapshot.py` is optional and runs after `forecast.py`. It appends the current state to `data/history/` so that a later evaluation can score each forecast against the information available when it was made. Nothing on the site depends on it. ## Quickstart Python 3.10 or newer. ```bash pip install requests anthropic ``` API keys are read from environment variables, or from a local `.env` file excluded by `.gitignore`: `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY`, `OPENAI_API_KEY` and `METACULUS_API_TOKEN`. They must never be committed. Only `fetch_markets.py` and `build_site.py` run without keys; `forecast.py` needs both model keys. A full run of ten questions costs one to two Swiss francs. ## Sourc …