Cultivate Labs and Pytho.io Team Up to Create a Forecaster Training Curriculum for INFER
By Adam Siegel on September 06, 2022
Cultivate Labs and Pytho.io announced today the creation of a forecaster training curriculum for INFER (INtegrated Forecasting and Estimates of Risk), a crowdsourced forecasting program run by the Advanced Research Lab for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS) at the University of Maryland. INFER’s mission is to support the decision and policymaking processes of U.S. Government officials through an ecosystem of crowdsourced forecasting programs and partnerships inside and outside the Government.
Designed by Pytho, the curriculum is modeled on forecasting training programs Pytho has successfully produced for governments and corporations globally and will be a valuable resource for INFER forecasters to “level up” their forecasting skills.
"I’m excited we can give back to the forecasting community at INFER in this way,” said Adam Siegel, CEO and Co-Founder of Cultivate Labs. “A free, comprehensive training program for forecasters has never existed before and we’re excited to partner with Pytho.io to bring it into existence on behalf of ARLIS and the INFER program."
Defining the forecasting curriculum is the first step towards building out a comprehensive training program offered by INFER, including a mix of online and live instruction offerings, and defining achievement levels that require a mix of training and practice to advance.
A sneak preview of one of the live instruction courses on open source research techniques will be offered this week to a group of INFER Pro and casual forecasters. Short online courses in bias awareness training previously built by Pytho.io will also be offered to INFER participants soon.
"We are delighted to partner with Cultivate Labs to bring our cognitive training system and accreditation concept to the INFER community on behalf of ARLIS," said Regina Joseph, Co-founder of Pytho LLC together with Co-founder Pavel Atanasov. "Pytho sees the opportunity to provide elite predictive reasoning training for free to INFER’s forecasters as an essential investment in the workforce of the future."About INFER
INFER, short for INtegrated Forecasting and Estimates of Risk, is a forecasting program designed to generate valuable signals and early warning about the future of critical science and technology trends and high-risk geopolitical events for U.S. Government policymakers. INFER empowers scientists, researchers, analysts, and hobbyists from inside and outside the U.S. Government to have a direct impact on policy and decision-making.
About Cultivate Labs
Cultivate Labs (“Cultivate”) provides crowdsourced forecasting software and related professional services to Government agencies, private industry, non-profits, and academic researchers.
Cultivate’s mission is to use the process of crowdsourced forecasting to quantify and reduce risk, and improve the rigor, hit-rate, and outcomes of “big bet” decisions.
About Pytho.io
Pytho is a boutique research and development agency co-founded in 2016 by Regina Joseph and Pavel Atanasov, specializing in forecasting, human-machine interaction and decision science. Since Pytho’s inception, Joseph and Atanasov have won grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF); a patent for their structured analytic technique called neuer with another pending for their method and software called Human Forest; and first place in multiple competitive research programs funded by Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). Their training systems and platforms have been used by such organizations as the US Marine Corps, ERSTE Bank and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, among others. Joseph is a superforecaster and Atanasov and Joseph together have been involved in research regarding elite forecasting audiences, methods and systems for over a decade. They have published in and presented at a variety of scientific journals and conferences, respectively.
