Carissa Véliz
speaker
349 appearances
4 recordings
4 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 12 Jun
Carissa Véliz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 2.
Appearances
But often we use AI as the new Oracle of Delphi, and tech executives whisper in the ears of our leaders, much like court astrologers used to.
Granted, the technology is different, but the political role is not.
Predictions are often power plays in disguise.
They justify value-laden decisions under the pretense of facts.
Better understanding prediction matters more than ever, because we're relying on forecasting more than ever with AI.
And based on how we talk about prediction, we're being much too naive about it.
But AI is science, you might think.
It's cutting-edge technology, right?
Well, it depends on the kind of AI and how we use it.
AI can be a great technology to make predictions about molecules in the search for new antibiotics.
But predictions about human beings are fundamentally different than those about things.
Predictions about the weather don't influence the weather.
Predictions about people influence people.
Social predictions tend to act like magnets.
They bend reality towards themselves.
They affect the reality they purport to predict.
An algorithmic prediction about future disease can make someone's insurance premiums go up, leading to worse health outcomes from stress alone.
Predictions sound like descriptions of the world, like facts, but they're not.
Analyzed closely as assertions, they are what philosophers called speech acts.
That is, language that does something other than describe the world.
Showing 121–140 of 349 · page 7 of 18
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