Hmm, I clicked that link and the first claimed bad prediction I see, from 1996, is "singularity 2035 (actually 2025)".

Predicting 2025-2035 as, at least, the period when AI becomes a really big deal, seems pretty good, even if the jury's still out on "singularity".

Broadly, the rationalists seem to have been pretty early to realizing LLMs were a big deal, and certainly seem to have had a much more accurate picture of how they'd develop than the people who denounce "TESCREAL" and talk about "stochastic parrots". It's fair (and IMHO correct) to ding rationalists for lots of things, but specifically poor prediction about AI seems like a bad one, insofar as anything has been tested so far.

> Broadly, the rationalists seem to have been pretty early to realizing LLMs were a big deal

You can't make that assertion when these same people made the LLM revolution happen, by securing the capital and human resources to realise their dream / nightmare

The people who made the LLM revolution happen were by no means exclusively rationalists--but more importantly, lots of people have lots of dreams about the future and even when pursued very, very few of those dreams pan out in anything like this way. LLMs are not what they are because of rationalists' sheer force of will.