Are Predictions Bunk?

I’m still workshopping my five-word Webby Award acceptance speech (because we won Best Tech Podcast!!!). Got an idea for it? @ me! Also, with the Webby win at our sails, today is a great day to tell a friend about Future Around & Find Out. Please help this show grow! And please consider supporting the Future by becoming a paid member:

I’m still stunned that we won the Webby for best tech podcast! Kwaku doesn’t like it when I say stuff like that, because as he reminds me in this “FAFO Friday” edition, “sometimes good things happen to good people.”

And so you see, this is why I love riffing with my man each week. (Side note: to shield his privacy, Kwaku told Claude that his name is “My Man”, so whenever he chats with it, it daps him up and gives him advice, starting with “My Man…” 🤣)

But seriously, who could’ve predicted this? And also, are all predictions bunk? Kwaku just returned from a week at “Big TED” and he reports back that the talk everyone is talking about is “Beware the power of prediction” from philosopher and AI ethicist Carissa Véliz.

What do the story of Oedipus and your insurance premiums have in common? They are both driven by self-fulfilling prophecies, according to Véliz and she warns us, on stage and in Prophecy, her new book, that we should we wary of false prophets and AI-driven predictions. Some predictions are useful she says, e.g. weather forecasts are great because the weather doesn’t care what you predict (weather is gonna weather whether you like it or not), but others become self-fulfilling prophecies: if an AI says someone is uninsurable and then you deny them insurance then yes, they are uninsurable, but were they before you deemed them so?

It all speaks to a powerlessness many of us feel. Speaking of which… Meta just rolled out employee surveillance that tracks keystrokes, mouse clicks, and periodic screenshots — to train AI on their employees' own jobs…. Someone threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's house… The anti-data-center backlash is getting physical. And (sorry) here’s a prediction, if people don’t start feeling like they have some agency, we’re going to see more of this (especially in an election year). But as Kwaku puts it, we are the fuel. AI does nothing without us, so let’s reclaim our agency, because…

The Future Needs a Word.

(That’s one of the five-word speech options we consider. I’m drawn to it, but not sold on it, so please share your own suggestions…)

Future on…

~ Dan