Forecasts of the future cost and performance of technologies are often used to support decision-making. However, retrospective reviews find that many forecasts made by experts are not very accurate and are often seriously overconfident, with realized values too frequently falling outside of forecasted ranges. Here, we outline a hybrid approach to expert elicitation that we believe might improve forecasts of future technologies. The proposed approach iteratively combines the judgments of technical domain experts with those of experts who are knowledgeable about broader issues of technology adoption and public policy. We motivate the approach with results from a pilot study designed to help forecasters think systematically about factors beyond the technology itself that may shape its future, such as policy, economic, and social factors. Forecasters who received briefings on these topics provided wider forecast intervals than those receiving no assistance.

对未来技术成本和性能的预测通常用于支持决策。然而，回顾性审查发现，专家做出的许多预测都不是很准确，而且往往严重过度自信，实现值经常超出预测范围。在这里，我们概述了一种专家启发的混合方法，我们认为这种方法可能会改善对未来技术的预测。所提议的方法反复地将技术领域专家的判断与对技术采用和公共政策等更广泛问题了如指掌的专家的判断相结合。我们通过一项试点研究的结果来激励这种方法，该研究旨在帮助预测者系统地思考技术本身之外可能影响其未来的因素，例如政策、经济和社会因素。