I thought the same while reading this - I can easily imagine the AI using hindsight to affect "how contrarian the leader's outlook was at the time", in a way that's similar to how we often do the same.
Would be interesting to do a similar analysis but maybe pushing the AI to search the web for articles/other reporting written during that time, to at least correct for that bias a little bit.
Would be interesting to do a similar analysis but maybe pushing the AI to search the web for articles/other reporting written during that time, to at least correct for that bias a little bit.