Is the end of privacy inevitable? Is programmable money inevitable? Is it inevitable that artificial intelligence will eliminate most of the world’s white-collar jobs?

Oxford professor Carissa Véliz argues that such claims are a red flag.

She’s the author of the new book “Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future.”

Someone who says a future is inevitable is trying to get you to do something and benefit from your belief, she argues.

She is convinced that such self‑fulfilling prophecies only work if we believe them and she urges people to defy these narratives by asking: Who is predicting this future? Who benefits? What data supports it—and what missing data might contradict it?

Véliz is a philosopher and author who specializes in privacy and the ethics of artificial intelligence. She is an associate professor of philosophy at the Institute for Ethics in AI and a Fellow at Hertford College at the University of Oxford.

Prediction, Véliz explains, is a business model: diagnose a problem, promise that more data will solve it, then sell tools to analyze the huge datasets institutions don’t know how to use.

Throughout history, rulers have attached themselves to prophets. Today, that role is played by immensely rich and powerful tech executives who advise governments and control key infrastructure and access to citizens via social media.

In our interview, we discuss how surveillance and behavioral prediction undermine and erode an open society where people should have the freedom to speak, protest, and be anonymous.

Other questions we discuss: Do “digital natives” like Gen Z and Gen Alpha—who have never experienced a true non-digital world—even understand the role of privacy? And what are the best antidotes to the harms of digital life?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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