In her new book ‘Prophecy,’ the scholar explores how probabilistic thinking —the basic tool of artificial intelligence — has become a mechanism for exercising power In her new book ‘Prophecy,’ the scholar explores how probabilistic thinking —the basic tool of artificial intelligence — has become a mechanism for exercising power In 2020, a thirty‑something Spanish‑Mexican philosopher burst into the global debate on the effects of technology. In her book Privacy Is Power , Carissa Véliz laid out why the constant intrusion of surveillance capitalism into people’s private lives is unacceptable. Her fresh, rigorous approach quickly turned the book into a touchstone in the field. Six years later, the Oxford University philosophy professor is back in bookstores with Prophecy . Her new work offers
In her new book ‘Prophecy,’ the scholar explores how probabilistic thinking —the basic tool of artificial intelligence — has become a mechanism for exercising power In her new book ‘Prophecy,’ the scholar explores how probabilistic thinking —the basic tool of artificial intelligence — has become a mechanism for exercising power In 2020, a thirty‑something Spanish‑Mexican philosopher burst into the global debate on the effects of technology. In her book Privacy Is Power , Carissa Véliz laid out why the constant intrusion of surveillance capitalism into people’s private lives is unacceptable. Her fresh, rigorous approach quickly turned the book into a touchstone in the field. Six years later, the Oxford University philosophy professor is back in bookstores with Prophecy . Her new work offers a clear‑eyed analysis of how statistics and predictions — now heavily used by artificial intelligence — have become tools of power that shape the world. “Predictions are often commands disguised as a search for knowledge. The entire data economy has been built because we want to predict; otherwise, we wouldn’t spend our time and energy on it,” she tells EL PAÍS during a visit to Madrid. Answer. In recent years, I’ve noticed that a culture of divination is emerging, one that’s closely tied to AI. Machine learning fosters a probabilistic mindset, which is emer