Book talk - 'Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and…

From an award-winning University of Oxford professor comes a brilliant, urgent new look at prophecies - the predictions that determine our lives, from our personal finances and the quality of our healthcare to the news and social media we consume and the products foisted upon us.

Today’s computer scientists play the same role as the oracles of the ancient world and the astrologers of the Middle Ages. Modern predictions not only advise on war, crop output, and marriages, but algorithms and statisticians also now determine whether we can get a loan, a job, an apartment, or an organ transplant. And when we cede ground to these predictions, we lose control of our own lives.

In this powerful, refreshing new look at the many ways prediction shapes our everyday lives, University of Oxford Professor Carissa Véliz explains how putting too much stock in others’ predictions makes us vulnerable to charlatans, con artists, dubious technology, and self-deception. Examining a wide range of subjects both personal and societal, including medicine, climate, technology, society, and others, Véliz uncovers a number of insights: predictions about humans tend to be self-fulfilling; more data doesn’t guarantee better outcomes; AI is more likely to increase risk than decrease it; and a free and robust society requires not more prediction, but better preparation.

Véliz argues in this incisive and bracingly original book that the main promise of prediction is not knowledge of the future, but rather power over others. Prophecy is an invitation to defy those orders and live life on our own terms.

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To register to attend in-person at the Oxford Martin School, please scroll down to the registration form at the bottom of the page
To register to watch online via Crowdcast: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/prophecy
To watch live/catch up afterwards: https://youtube.com/live/ZMMZtaGx0wI
(live captions available on Youtube)

Carissa Véliz
Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute of Ethics in AI

Carissa Véliz is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI, as well as a Tutorial Fellow at Hertford College, at the University of Oxford. Her first book, Privacy Is Power, was an Economist book of the year and has been published in seven languages. She is also the author of The Ethics of Privacy and Surveillance and the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics.

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